Mind of the Beholder
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: Two thousand black sedans. Four FBI agents. Two kidnapped kids. One fight between a mathematician and a psychic. Story now complete. Was it good enough? Should I write another one?
1. Chapter 1

Mind of the Beholder

By OughtaKnowBetter

There was only one—and Don meant _only_ one—good thing about getting shot. It was that numb feeling that occurred for the first half second after it happened. Because everything that followed pretty much went down hill from there.

He didn't even realize at first that it had happened. "Go! Go! Go!" he was yelling, rifle in his hands, vest snugged tight around his chest with the yellow 'FBI' emblazoned on it both back and front. From the way that it first felt, it was entirely possible that he had bumped up against one of the other agents similarly attired and similarly armed, jostling their aim as they moved forward on the house where the kidnapper was roaring out through the front door with his semi-automatic blazing.

They had had to move fast. The tip had come in, a sheer piece of luck: a nosy neighbor with too much time and a pair of high-powered binoculars on her hands, and with a little five year old girl's life at stake there was no time to do anything but hustle. Don had immediately called for an assault team and they were at the scene within minutes armed with rifles and warrants.

Colby had been elected to scope out the back, his own field glasses in his pocket. "Movement inside, Don," he'd reported, "a single male Caucasian, balding, in his thirties. Looks like the repairman that the Coopers reported."

"Any sign of the kid?"

"Nope. Wait a minute; let me check the next bedroom over. Nope, nothing there. He's sitting in the kitchen with a drink in one hand and the phone in the other."

"Anyone else inside? He alone?"

"He's alone—wait a sec. He's getting up, moving around. He's heading toward the front of the house. I think he's getting spooked, Don. Get ready."

"Colby, you see anyone else in that house?"

"Nope. There's places I can't see, boss, but I haven't seen any second perpetrator. I think he's alone. And the kid's not there. I'm not seeing her."

Megan had broken in, her own field glasses to her face. "He's peering out through the front window curtains, Don. I see him. He's nervous."

"He's bolting!" David had called from the side. "Don, he's picking up a gun—"

Which is when and why Don called for the assault at that moment. It was by the book. It was the right thing to do: drop the kidnapper before he could get away with the kid. Assuming the kid was still alive, a prospect that no one was certain of since no one had seen the kid inside and the kidnapper had steadfastly refused to allow the five year old to talk to the parents. Nobody had felt good about the potential outcome. Smart kidnappers put kids on the phone to hustle the parents into paying up. This one didn't. This case was going down hill fast in a hand basket to hell. Don really didn't want to have to tell a mother and father that their only child was dead.

Don called for the assault. It was the only thing he could have done; the kidnapper left him no other choice. The guy came out, gun blazing, doing a good imitation of both Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid all by himself as though he had nothing to lose. The suspect fired; the FBI team fired back. Four bullets—possibly more—ripped into the man's chest. The autopsy later would be able to tell for certain how many bullets and exactly which one did the deed.

The team moved forward, firing. Someone jostled Don at the shoulder, nearly knocked him over. Don started to round on the guy lined up beside him only to realize that the man was a good five feet away from him in approved assault spacing. It wasn't the other agent that had belted him in the shoulder.

_That_ was when the pain kicked in.

Momentum carried him another few yards until an over-sized azalea bush leaped into Don's path to trip him up. He was going down; he knew it, the azalea knew it, the damn flak jacket that didn't cover enough of what it was supposed to knew it. And then David was crouched over him, yelling about a man down, and Don so hated this, hated losing control over the situation that he had responsibility for, how could he direct the operation sitting on his ass on the wet grass dammit what was he going to have to write in that damn report…

* * *

"The lawn's wet," Don grumbled. "Somebody turn off the sprinkler system before I catch pneumonia."

"It's not on, Don." David carefully hooked a hand under Don's shoulder. "You're going into shock. Let's get you to the ambulance."

"I don't need an ambulance," Don insisted, trying not to lean on the other man. _What a time for this to happen!_ "What's going on inside the house?"

"We're not finding anyone," Megan told him, getting the high sign from Colby who was running the interior inspection. She moved into position to give Don no opportunity to object to his team's ministrations. "One guy, no evidence that the Cooper girl was ever present, although we know that she must have been. "

"And the suspect?"

"George Barris, according to his driver's license. I've already phoned it in; we're running the wants and warrants on him right now."

"I want to know everything about him," Don announced, grudgingly allowing David to swing Don's good arm over his shoulders, trying to pretend to himself that people were listening to what he was telling them. He was in charge, wasn't he? Blackness sidled along the edge of his vision. Don swallowed hard, tried to push it away. Nausea needled his gut. "I want his known associates, his last known address—"

"We know what to look for, Don," Megan said gently. "Let David get you to the ambulance."

"I don't need an ambulance." Dammit, did his knees have to give out right at that moment? They were making him look bad.

"Sure, you don't," David agreed, the grin in his voice over-shadowed by concern. "We just have to make those paramedic guys feel useful. Wouldn't want them to feel left out."

"Yes, we would," Don grumbled. _Damn, but they kept the stretcher high off of the ground. They think I'm on stilts?_ The two ambulance attendants took hold of him, easing him down onto the stretcher, one grabbing a handful of bandages and slapping it against where the bullet had entered. Don hissed with sudden pain—_dammit, I've been shot. How am I going to explain this to Dad?...

* * *

_

"Look, it's not bad," Don insisted, wishing that he had the energy to jump up off of the stretcher before they put the whole thing into the back of the ambulance and carted him off to the local hospital. "Charlie, don't call Dad! He'll only get upset—"

"Of course he's going to get upset!" Charlie snapped back. His brother's eyes were wide: big and scared. "Lie back on the stretcher, Don. You're bleeding."

"Getting shot tends to do that." Don suddenly felt very tired, the adrenaline leaving him with unaccustomed rapidity. Someone had cranked the back of the stretcher up so that he was half-sitting, and now he was half-regretting it as his consciousness tried to drift half-away. _Hah—doing a Charlie, with all the fractions_. _Who said that little brothers weren't a pain in the rear? Naw, just a pain in the arm. _"Charlie, please don't tell Dad. It's just a scratch. I'm okay; they'll release me inside of an hour. What are you doing on the crime scene instead of inside the Suburban where I put you? Ow," he complained, as the attendant gently wrestled his arm into a sling, binding it to his body. "Where's Megan? What do we have on the kid? She inside?"

"You leave that to us, Don," Megan said gently from right beside him. Don squinted at her, vision suddenly fuzzy. "We're still searching the place."

"How long does it take to find one little girl? She's not there, right?"

"No, she's not," Megan admitted. "We're looking for clues, something to tell us where Barris hid her. It can't have been too far away."

"Yeah," Don agreed, thoroughly aware of Charlie standing beside him, eyebrows furrowed with fear. _Carefully not gonna say that the kid's probably dead by now. There was a reason that Barris wouldn't let her talk to her mommy and daddy_. He sagged back against the firm surface of the stretcher, reluctantly grateful for the support. But there was more support that he needed. The case wasn't over yet. There was a little girl out there somewhere. "Charlie, you're gonna pull some numbers out of your magic hat, right? Figure out where he took her?"

"I can do that," Charlie said. But the sparkle of drive wasn't there. And, Don noted, Charlie wasn't spouting off about this theorem or that concept that would solve the problem. _Plug in the equation, and let's go_. Don closed his eyes wearily. Did he know? Did he suspect that the kid was dead? Or was Charlie just worried about Don himself?

David, off to the side, snapped his cell phone shut. "Don! Don!" he called, rushing to the stretcher. "They found her! The kid's alive!"

"They found her? How?" Charlie breathed, his face lighting up. The sparkle crept back in.

"The Great Vervette."

The sparkle dimmed.

* * *

"I can walk," Don grumbled, clutching onto the sling that bound his arm tightly to the rest of his body, grateful for whoever had put it there. His arm was giving off those little signals that told him that any movement beyond half an inch would result in mind-blowing pain that would send him to his knees and completely ruin the picture of health that he was trying to project to his father and brother. It was bad enough that Charlie had called their father from the Emergency Department. Now the pair had hijacked him, refused to let him recuperate in his apartment in peace, kept insisting that he needed someone to look after him for a day or two or fifteen. It was enough to make him wish that he'd never moved back from Albuquerque.

"You _used_ to be able to walk," his father announced grimly. "In case you hadn't noticed it, Donnie, you've been shot. Get into the wheelchair and wait there until I bring the car around."

"Dad—"

"No arguments," his father told him with a tone that he hadn't used in over a decade. "You want me to call in back up?"

"Charlie? Get real—"

"Megan," Alan Eppes said.

Don shut up. The woman could talk a jumper off a bridge, could bring out a desperate felon looking at murder one out of a barracks filled with illegal semi-automatics. Don hadn't a chance, and his father knew it.

"Gee, thanks," Charlie grumbled. "I'm no good as back up?"

"Charlie," his father said, turning around on his way out through the Emergency Room door, "as a mathematician, you are world class. I bow to your genius. But your older brother has always been able to twist you around his little finger like a pretzel."

"Not always," Charlie protested. Then, "well, maybe a little."

The grunt that his father gave just before the doors closed gave ample evidence as to what he thought of that admission.

Don wasted no time taking advantage of his younger brother. "Give."

"What?"

"You heard me. I saw you talking to David after they loaded me into the ambulance. What did we find?"

Alan Eppes was right; keeping secrets from Don was all but impossible and Charlie didn't bother to try. "_We_ didn't find anything," he said with an almost audible sniff. "While one of us was being carted off to the hospital—"

"Charlie!"

"—the other of us was too busy worrying—"

"You've got my cell phone. Give it to me." Don was through playing around.

"Nope."

"If I have to get out of this wheelchair—" Ignoring the fact that he'd fall on his nose and put that into a sling as well.

"David said that they didn't find anything," Charlie said hurriedly. "The Forensics Unit went through the house with a fine tooth comb, and didn't find any evidence of the little girl. Barris apparently never had her there. He must have taken her directly to the place where they found her."

Don grunted. "The kid identify the shooter as the kidnapper?"

"Megan said she was pretty upset. They showed her a picture of the guy, an old mug shot with no blood on it, and she said that it looked pretty much like him. Megan seemed to think that that was the best identification that we'd get out of a five year old, and left it at that."

"But we got her back." That was the important thing. A little five year old girl would be going home to spend the rest of her childhood cosseted and cherished by a pair of parents who likely wouldn't be ready to let her out of their sight until she was thirty and maybe not even then. "How?"

Charlie looked away. "It was that psychic guy."

Don didn't have to cover a smirk. Charlie was busy studying the hospital 'Patient Bill of Rights' on the wall, refusing to look at his brother. 'You have the right to a clear explanation of your illness' was one of the lines. 'You have the right to be thoroughly confounded by the unexplainable' was Don's take on the matter.

"The Great Vervette?" Don allowed the smirk to sidle into his voice. "Well, what do you know? I guess he's the real thing after all. He was able to find the kid just by holding her dolly. Psychic brain waves."

Silence.

"What was that, Charlie?" Butter could melt in his mouth, he was so innocent.

"There has yet to be any study that clearly proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that psychic powers exist," Charlie said clearly, enunciating each word.

"And this doesn't count? Seems like The Great Vervette did a pretty good job with this."

"Anecdotal evidence." Charlie still wouldn't meet Don's eyes. "These results are not reproducible and therefore scientifically invalid."

"What, you want to stick him in a room and make him read cards?" Don asked, needling his brother.

"I don't have to. I looked this guy up. They did stick him in a room, and yes, he did several runs of cards and achieved a 73 percent accuracy."

"That not good enough for you? Identifying the suits in a deck of cards, that's what? One in four chance? What's the likelihood of getting 73 percent of them right?"

"Through the application of psychic powers, astronomically small," Charlie snapped back. "Getting 73 percent of them right through trickery, almost 100 percent guaranteed, which was what the stage magicians proved. They demonstrated how he did it, using the reflection off the reader's glasses. When they changed readers to a woman wearing contacts—and it was one of the magicians who was very good at keeping a straight face—his accuracy dropped to 30. Slightly above average but well within a standard deviation of normal. So there."

"Ooh, a little cranky are we? Ow." Don bit his lip at the inadvertent movement of his injured arm. "So he can't read cards in front of a critical audience. Psychics have been saying for years that doubting interferes with their ability to work. Does that prove that psychic powers don't exist?"

"No. But it doesn't prove that they do," Charlie returned. "No one claiming to have psychic powers has ever been able to demonstrate _conclusively_ that these powers exist. Every test devised, every 'power' that anyone claims to possess, can be duplicated by sleight of hand. We don't need 'mystical gifts' for a rational explanation."

"And him finding that little girl? That doesn't prove anything?"

"If he can do that over and over again, then I would be willing to consider it as 'proof'," Charlie allowed, "but I don't think there are any parents out there willing to have their children kidnapped so that we can test that hypothesis, do you?"

One corner of Don's mouth quirked upward. "Really getting to you, isn't he?"

"No, he's not. _You_ are," Charlie snapped back. "Why won't you listen to the science of this?"

"Hey," Don objected, "I just headed up an operation that got a little girl back to her parents alive and well. I use your math because it works, and I'll do the same with voodoo and mumbo-jumbo if it'll get the job done. Just because he found her and you didn't isn't a good enough reason for me to dismiss him, even if I do have a tough time calling him 'The Great Vervette' instead of Ralph Maurer."

"You do realize that he's only doing this for the publicity?" Charlie struck a pose. "'Look at me: I'm the Great Vervette! The FBI can't tie their own shoelaces without me!'"

"You are _so_ jealous over this," Don mocked. "You can't stand it."

"I am not! I'm frustrated because you and Megan and everyone are eating this up. Can't you see that—"

"See what, Charlie?" Don taunted. "See how he found a little five year old girl? How did he do that? Huh?"

Charlie glared. "There has to be a reasonable explanation."

"Right. And how about Megan? How did he know that her mother had just gotten over the flu? Pretty good for a man she'd never met until two days ago. And that David had a sister? And that Colby is originally from Idaho? Shall I go on?"

"_I_ could figure that out," Charlie argued. "This is the New Millennium, Don. You Google something, it pops up."

"Not on FBI agents, Charlie," Don told him. "How about you? Have you ever Googled yourself? You're famous. What do you find?"

"Lots of stuff. I find that paper that I submitted to the Journal of Applied Mathematics, and the one that I co-authored with Professor Kingsley at Oxford, and the one—"

"Besides articles," Don interrupted. "Personal life? The fact that you have a brother that's in the FBI? The fact that you worked for the NSA? Charlie, The Great Vervette even knew that I have a scar on my left knee! How did he know that? I got that when I was what, twelve?"

"Ten," Charlie replied, setting his lips.

"And how about Colby's horse, when he was a kid? Tell me that knowing that the horse's name was Burgess was something that he could have gotten off of the Internet. It's not as though that was something that this character would have known without psychic powers, Charlie. I mean, c'mon! Burgess, for a horse's name?"

"There has to be a rational explanation—" Charlie tried to insist when a car pulled up.

His father poked his head out. "You two arguing again? Charlie, leave your brother alone or I'll send you to your room in the house that you now own. Get in."

* * *

"The pieces aren't fitting together." Colby pursed his lips, looking as though he'd like to throw the case file across the room.

"I know what you mean," Don agreed. It was three days later, three days of enjoying his father's cooking and hating being waited on hand and foot. Don was never so glad to get back to his office. It was on light duty, his arm still stuffed into a sling, but it was out of his father's house. Charlie's house. _Whatever_. "Run through what you've come up with. I want this case closed before the day is out. The kid is back safe and there's no point in trying to prosecute a dead body. Let's see if we can make a reasonable scenario out of this and dump it into the file cabinet so we can move on to more pressing matters. Run the facts, Colby. Let me hear them out loud."

"Again?" Colby made a face. "Little girl gets snatched by ex-con George Barris, a guy who got out two weeks ago after doing five years of a fifteen to twenty for armed robbery. That part makes sense: Barris needs the money and he sees this kid playing in a rich neighborhood with a bunch of other kids. A neighbor identifies him as a workman in the area."

"_Possible_ workman," David slid in, "and _possible_ ID. Medium height, sandy blond hair, medium build can fit a lot of people. Including you, Colby."

Colby accepted the correction. "Some of the kids see Barris taking the kid away in an older model sedan, black or dark blue, California plates but nobody got a license plate."

"They're five year olds," Megan murmured. "They just barely know numbers and letters."

"The circus begins," Colby went on. "The newspapers get involved, the word gets out. The ransom note is delivered to the newspapers, instructing the parents to put money in a bag, etc."

Megan took up the tale. "But before the deadline, someone spots the suspect and phones it in. We surround the place and we take down the suspect who, unfortunately, doesn't want to be taken alive. He shoots up the neighborhood and shoots up a certain team leader who shall remain nameless."

"And I thank you for that. The nameless part, I mean." Don set his coffee mug back onto the desk so that he could scratch a couple of notes onto the pad of paper sitting in front of him. It helped to write, helped with the thinking. He frowned; something was trying to percolate through his foggy wits. "The neighbor who spotted Barris; who was it?"

Megan consulted her own notes. "Mrs. Evelyn Thornton. She checks out, Don. She's lived there with her husband, two kids, a dog, and an SUV for the last five years. Scratch that—the SUV is only two years old. She called in to say that there was a blond man in the neighborhood that she didn't recognize, a man who didn't belong there. She wasn't certain that it was our guy, but a drive-by with a scope confirmed it."

That little hinky feeling that Don had learned through long experience never to ignore started to quiver. "Who interviewed her? You?"

"No." Megan consulted her notes again. "It was LAPD. An Officer Manny Gutierrez. You want me to talk to him?"

Don shook his head. "No, I want _you_ to talk to Mrs. Thornton. Does she make a habit of spying on her neighbors? What's her connection to Barris, if any?" He regretted shaking his head; it jostled his arm which still hadn't forgiven him for getting himself shot. It twinged slightly before delivering a sharp stab as a reminder. But if he took any of those pain-killers the doctor had prescribed, he'd have to ask one of his team for a lift home. _His_ home, his apartment, where he could relax in peace without his father forbidding him to lift so much as a TV remote control…

"You think she may be in on it?"

Don sighed. "Let's just say that I agree with you, Colby: this case doesn't add up. This is a straight-forward kidnapping, or is meant to look like one. But the kidnapper doesn't have the kid, and when we catch up with him, he doesn't try to negotiate his way out. If you were caught with your pants down, wouldn't you try to bargain for your freedom by giving up the location of the kid?"

"Which suggests that he didn't know the location." David caught on at once.

"And all of the identifications are weak," Megan agreed. "The five years olds can easily mistake one man for another, especially if they look similar. And kids will say whatever they can to please adults, which is why they aren't reliable witnesses, in court or out." She set her own mug down. "I'll talk to Mrs. Thornton, see what I can find out." But Megan made no attempt to stand up. "How far do you want to take this, Don? I mean, it's a closed case. The little girl is safe, and the kidnapper is dead. There aren't very many leads to run down."

Don started to look at his watch, stopped when his arm reminded him that any movement involving that area of his body was punishable by torture. "Let's give it until the end of the day," he compromised. "Charlie's been snarling ever since I got home that the facts aren't adding up."

David nodded. "I have to agree with him, but there are times when the facts _won't_ add up. This may be one of those times. The kidnapper acted stupidly. The kid is back; end of case." He grimaced. "Well, maybe not. The newspapers have been interviewing The Great Vervette non-stop, and I hear that talk shows offers and jobs are flooding the phones and the mail for him, and he's been asking around for someone to help him with a website. He's certainly making a bundle off of this. Much more, and he'll need an agent."

"If he's got a gift, good for him," was Megan's opinion. "And if he can find more lost people by using it, even better."

"And _that's_ Charlie's problem," Don grumped. "He doesn't believe in psychic phenomena, so he doesn't want anyone else around him to, either. I think he's trying to come up with a theorem or some such that will disprove their existence."

"Good luck," Colby said wryly. "I mean, it's hard to argue when the guy tells you the name of your horse that you rode ten years ago. _And_ tells you the color of the mane." He shook his head. "We ought to think about putting that guy on retainer, Don. He's good."

"Just don't tell that to Charlie," David advised. He stood up. "I'll see what I can dig up on Barris's background, just to have a few more facts in the case file. Then we can close it up with a clear conscience. You need a lift home, Don?"

"No. I can handle the Suburban with one hand." _Wouldn't mind it, but I've got my pride to think of_. "I'll just finish up my own report and head back to my apartment." _Which doesn't really feel like 'home'. My old house—Charlie's house, now—is where the heart is. Not that I'll ever let him know that._ "Didn't you say that The Great Vervette was due to stop back in? I'll take that angle."

Typing his report one-handed took longer that Don thought. He was only half finished when the self-styled 'psychic consultant' rapped at the glass to his cubicle for admittance.

Ralph Maurer was nothing if not mediocre-looking. Not short, but certainly not tall, and would have been wearing spectacles if medical science hadn't come up with contact lenses. Brown eyes, mousy brown hair that tried to droop into his eyes but was too short to reach. The fedora that he wore looked ridiculous, as though the psychic was from a bad fifties' flick, and the suit came straight off the rack with a sale price of fifty percent off. He wore a small gold stud in one ear that flashed with a diamond chip. Or maybe a simulated diamond chip; Don wasn't about to ask. He smelled of cheap cologne.

"Glad you could stop by." Don shook hands, grateful that it wasn't his right arm that had gotten winged. "Sit down. I hear you've been making out pretty well over this."

The Great Vervette grinned. "Yes, well, a little publicity will do that. Letterman has approached me as well as Leno, but I think I'm going to turn down Jerry Springer. I'm not quite certain what I could bring to Mr. Springer's venue. And that newspaper man Ken Randall tells me that he's running a lovely article on me in tomorrow's paper." He leaned forward, a worried expression on his face. "I insisted that Mr. Randall not make you folks out to be bumbling idiots. You're all quite good at your jobs. It's not your fault that you don't have my gift."

Don's face froze. "Thanks." He picked up a pen, just to have something to do with the hand that wasn't in a sling. "I'm just cleaning up the records, finishing up the case files. Remind me; how did you hear about this case?"

"I didn't 'hear' about it," The Great Vervette told him. "There was nothing on the news at that point, if you recall. I merely got a 'feeling' that something was wrong; I kept seeing that child's face everywhere I looked. I kept being drawn to the La Paz park, but couldn't figure out why until the very end."

"So you knew about this before the newspapers did?"

"Well, yes and no. I 'knew' about it but didn't know exactly _what_ it was until I saw the child's picture in the paper. Then it was quite obvious."

"Which was when you came in," Don acknowledged. "You contacted the parents—"

"Who were only to happy to have me on the case—"

"—and you did your thing." Don had dealt with his share of psychic crazies—it was almost commonplace in this day and age—and The Great Vervette had been one of the better ones, not getting in the FBI's way and not demanding special favors. A quick background check showed the man to be clean, and that he'd even helped the Seattle office with a similar case last year. Not as high profile, nothing leaking out to the media like this one, but a successful ending to a kidnapping case with the three year boy going home to Mommy and Daddy at the end of the day. And there was nothing that linked Ralph Maurer to little Bethie in any way shape or form, nothing to suggest that this was a set up of any kind. So Don had permitted the man to sit in while they ran down leads and waited for the follow up ransom call. "Tell me about it."

The Great Vervette took a deep breath, preparing himself. "I sat here, in your office, when your tip came in. You remember?"

"I remember." It hadn't been just Don, but Megan, David, Colby, and Charlie, waiting for the results of the plain clothes man's drive by. It had been a tense time, with all of them waiting for the report, Charlie trying not to glower at the psychic. The Great Vervette himself had been going for the wounded nobility look: _how can you doubt me? Did I not prove myself in Seattle?_

"The atmosphere was not conducive to my powers," The Great Vervette confided. "There were negative influences present."

_Right. Charlie. Those eyebrows get you every time_.

"When your report came in, I _knew_ that there would an unfortunate outcome. There was a black aura around you, Special Agent Eppes." Ralph Maurer, AKA The Great Vervette, pointed at Don's arm in the sling. "You can see that I was right."

Don grunted. "You could have told me that."

"Would you have believed me?" The Great Vervette asked. "Your brother certainly wouldn't have."

"We can leave Charlie out of this." Don scratched on the writing pad. "The point is, you believed that we wouldn't find the little girl."

"I _knew_ that you wouldn't find her," the psychic corrected. "Yet her mental voice was still calling to me. I sought her out."

"And you found her in a shed in the La Paz park, just by holding her doll."

"I followed her psychic trail." Ralph sighed, tired of needing to correct the FBI agent. "She called to me. And, once I knew how to look, I found her. As you know."

"Anybody go with you to find her?"

"Only that newspaper man, Ken Randall," the psychic said. "I told him to stay back, that his aura would interfere with my search. He has a very powerful aura himself, that Mr. Randall. Almost magenta."

"Magenta?" Don couldn't help it; the question slipped out.

The Great Vervette nodded wisely. "It's not quite right to describe auras in terms of colors, but that's the closest I can come to those who aren't gifted as I am. He saw me as I left, and asked if he could come along. Knowing that he wouldn't be welcome with you, I permitted it. Finding little Bethie made such a lovely article for Mr. Randall, don't you think?"

Don put that question aside. "And what kind of 'aura' did little Bethie have, Mr. Maurer?"

"Please, call me Ralph. I try not to stand on ceremony." The Great Vervette put the dreamy look back on his face. "She has a delicate pink aura, one that looks like it ought to have lace around the edges. Something like Agent Reeves'; hers has little silver threads running through it."

Don couldn't help it. "How about me? Do I have an aura?"

The Great Vervette smiled. "Of course you do, Agent Eppes. Almost everyone does. Yours has that lovely royal blue color to it, a very solid and trustworthy color. It suits you. It _fits_."

Time to get back on track. "So, how did you know to look in that shed? What led you to the kid?"

"Her aura," Ralph Maurer repeated. "Once I was out in the open, away from the Black Hole, the perceptions became clear. I was able to go straight to her."

"The Black Hole?"

The psychic looked almost prissy. "There was someone in your office whose aura was preventing my powers from working."

"Don't tell me; let me guess. Charlie."

"I'm sorry to tell you that, Special Agent Eppes, but you are correct. Once his influence was no longer present, I was able to work. And, as you recall, I was successful. I led Mr. Randall straight to little Bethie."

Not gonna get anything more out of this guy; Don recognized that. He would write all the psychic stuff down into the report, file it away, and move on. Some people would say that it was psychic powers that cracked the case, and others would be skeptical. Don would be satisfied that the little girl went home to her parents and the State was saved the expense of a trial. A hole in his arm was a small price to pay.

But there was one more thing that he had to know, something that wouldn't make it into his report. "How about Charlie, Mr. Maurer? What color is his aura?"

The Great Vervette looked uncomfortable. He looked away, out through the window, before giving an apologetic smile. "He hasn't got one, Agent Eppes. He's too busy repressing it."


	2. Mind of the Beholder 2

"Repressing it?" Charlie sputtered. "Don't tell me that you fell for that garbage, Don! There's nothing to repress!"

"Getting awfully upset over nothing, are we?" Don couldn't help it; teasing his little brother remained one of the great joys of his life. It usually felt best right after one of their high school teachers had compared the two brothers—and found Don lacking in the math department, even though he did fairly well, to be honest—but now that they were grown he still enjoyed occasionally getting his licks in. 'Keeping the kid's head a normal size' was how he described it to himself. "Oh, wait. I forgot. You have _nothing_. No aura, no nothing. Is that what has you so upset, Chuck?"

A nonverbal growl was the response, then, as Don had silently predicted to himself, the rationalization began. "There is no scientific evidence that psychic powers exist, Don. Even Houdini himself, a man who desperately _wanted_ to believe, made it his life's work to expose frauds and charlatans. Every year, on Houdini's birthday, his family gathers for a séance to see if he'll come back to talk to them. If anyone would, it would be Houdini. He as much as anyone wanted for it to happen. Face it, Don: The Great Vervette is a fraud."

"But he's a _successful_ fraud," Don pointed out. "He found the kid, Charlie. How do you explain that?"

"I don't have to," Charlie sniffed. "Statistically, what he did was highly unlikely, and I'd hate to have to calculate the odds. The numbers would be astronomical. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible. There's always, statistically, that one chance of success."

"You mean he was lucky."

"That's one possibility."

"There's others?"

"There's always others."

"Such as?"

"I've already told you." Charlie deliberately turned his back on Don, picking up the marker to the white board.

"So tell me again."

"To date, there is no scientifically valid evidence that psychic powers exist. Every instance can be duplicated using sleight of hand and so-called 'cold reading'. Every test of any so-called 'psychic' under controlled circumstances with trained observers has failed to conclusively prove that these 'powers' exist." Charlie crossed his arms. "For example: that scar on your left knee you were talking about, the one that The Great Vervette 'knew' about?"

"Yeah? What about it? How did he know that it was there?"

"Approximately eighty percent of all right-handed people have some sort of scar on their left knee," Charlie quoted. "When you fall, as a right-handed person you put out your right hand to break your fall, and then your left knee for balance. The opposite obtains for left-handed people. Your psychic merely had looked up a few statistics to make himself appear omniscient. He observes that you are right-handed, and then comes forth with a simple conclusion. Voile! He's psychic!"

"So you're saying that there's no such thing as psychic phenomena," Don pushed, trying to see how far he could needle his brother. This was getting more and more fun. If he really worked it, Don would bet that he could rile his brother all through dinner. And if their father ever got into it…? Sometimes cheap entertainment was the best.

"That's not what I'm saying at all."

"So telepathy and stuff like that _does_ exist.'

"It might. It just hasn't been proven."

"But you just said—"

"_Logic_, Don. I said that psychic powers have not yet been proven to exist. Absence of proof does not imply the negative. Nobody's proven that 'telepathy and stuff' _don't_ exist, only that we haven't proven that they _do_. Understand?"

Don blinked. "No."

One corner of Charlie's mouth quirked up, and despite the absence of proof, Don had the uncomfortable feeling that Charlie had read his mind about the crack about cheap entertainment. And turned it around onto his older brother.

But Charlie wasn't done yet. "You ever watch the X-Files?"

"Sometimes."

"You ever see the poster on the wall of Mulder's office?"

"Your point?"

"It said: _I want to believe_. That's what's going on here. It would be nice if we could say that your Great Vervette could find kidnapped kids with the power of his mind, but there's no proof that says that it's actually happening. He's a fraud."

"And back to square one: he's a _successful_ fraud, which is what I said in the first place," Don pointed out. "It doesn't matter if he's a fraud or not. He found the kid. Or I suppose you're going to tell me that he was in on the kidnapping?"

"It's a more probable scenario—"

"Oh, no. You're not getting me to re-open the case, just because you don't believe in psychic powers. We checked him out: Ralph Maurer had absolutely no connection with that kid or her parents, and no links to anyone who did. He got absolutely no benefit from finding the kid except for the satisfaction of seeing the girl returned to her parents. And that's a benefit that everyone of us prayed for." Don suddenly sniffed the air. "Is that garlic bread?"

"And lasagna," Charlie nodded, his attention re-focused on a safer topic. "And that's not psychic powers, just good powers of observation."

"You saw Dad buy the groceries?"

"Nope. Simple logic: you're staying here while your arm gets better. You like Dad's lasagna. Dad wants to please you. Therefore: lasagna. If A, B, and C all obtain, then D occurs. Q.E.D."

Don raised his eyebrows. "Q.E.D.? I thought we were talking logic, not alphabet soup."

"_Quod erat demonstrandum_. That which has been demonstrated. Simple logic. Simple _basic_ logic."

Don gave up. Baiting Charlie had been a lot easier when they were both kids. "Let's go get some lasagna. Assuming that you're right, and Dad did make it."

"Statistically guaranteed," Charlie assured him.

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At least they gave him a couple of days to get his arm out of the sling before the copycats descended.

It didn't take long. Don walked in that morning, still opening the door with his other hand—just because his left was out of the sling didn't mean it didn't _hurt_ when he asked it to do things—and Colby didn't even let him finish his early cup of coffee before darting into his office. That was all right; under the circumstances, Don would have bawled the junior agent out if he _hadn't_ rushed.

Copycat, it was. Same M.O.: a four year old boy this time, playing in the playground, in the sandbox, his mother said. She had been talking to one of the other mothers, the kid wandered a few steps away and got snatched up by a blond man in a black sedan. License plate had a 'D' or an 'O' or maybe a zero in it. Not a lot of help there. That might cut down the number of vehicles to oh, maybe a million. Mom hadn't really seen the kidnapper, just heard the other kids screeching. It was the other four year olds who said that the kidnapper was tall and blond, a guy, and that was after you persuaded 'em to take their thumbs out of their mouths. Not a good scene, but he learned that David Sinclair was astonishingly good with kids. Just another attribute to lay at the agent's door.

Not helping. Don rounded up his team to talk to the parents, Bart and Rebecca Smithers, well to do but going to have a tough time coming up with the cool million that the ransom note demanded. That note had arrived on the same reporter's desk that the last one had, telling the heartbroken parents that little Bart Jr. was okay and that they should wait for instructions.

It was a nice neighborhood that Don pulled up into, the rest of his team in the Suburban beside him. He could see both David and Colby doing an assessment of the neighborhood: houses worth at least half a million, most of that tied up in mortgages. The landscaping alone had to set these people back a few thousand every year. Not the most expensive neighborhood, though; there was no view of the ocean, off in the distance. Any sea breezes drifting this way would definitely be second hand. No matter; Don had seen plenty of fence-enclosed pools in the back yards. It cut down on the lawns that had to be watered almost daily during the dry season. Wide driveways with two cars in drive, one an SUV to ferry the kids around and the other an upscale Beamer. Clearly the dog did not get into _that_ vehicle, not unless it was a Chihuahua with no hair and no drool. Even the kids would be relegated to the SUV.

Bart Smithers met them at the door, Rebecca on the sofa with a tear-stained face. Don caught a glimpse of an older child, a girl about ten with a frightened expression, peering down at them from the stairs. Don ignored her; Megan would deal with the Smithers' first born if and when it became necessary but as far as Don knew the ten year old had had nothing to do with the crime and had been in school when it occurred. _Going some when I have to think about a ten year old committing a crime. What's the world coming to?_

Bart Smithers himself was a giant of a man made smaller by circumstances. The broad shoulders, no doubt pride of his high school football team, were bowed and there were enough lines in his face to make a plastic surgeon's retirement dreams come true. The full head of hair looked like hands had slicked it back too many times, terrified over what was happening to his son. His wife Rebecca was no better. Her Hollywood good looks had vanished. Any thoughts that Don had that this might be an inside family matter evaporated in an instant.

Although…

"First marriage?"

"Second, for me," Bart admitted. "Is that important?"

"It might be. How's your relationship with your ex-wife?" Don asked carefully.

"Not the greatest, but I can't see Darlene doing this. Too much work. She'd rather take me back to court a few dozen times more."

How to phrase this delicately? "Your son, biologically…?"

"With Rebecca," Bart Sr. answered, understanding at once, "and so is my daughter Madison. Darlene was unable to carry a child to term. It was part of what broke up my first marriage."

"And you don't think that she might have taken your son to get back you?"

Bart snorted. "Not a chance, Mr. Eppes. If she were going to take anyone, she'd wait until Madison was fourteen and take her shopping. Then she'd bring her home so that she wouldn't have to supervise any homework and hand the bills over to me. Like I said, Darlene is allergic to anything resembling work. I only wish I'd known that before I married her."

"What has all this got to do with my son?" Rebecca wanted to know. "Do you think that Darlene…?"

"Probably not," Don said, "but we'll check it out anyway. You can give me her address, and we'll run it down just to be on the safe side. How about enemies? Either of you?"

"No one that would be capable of this." Bart spread his hands in disgust. "I'm in plumbing parts supply. Yeah, some of the unions can get a little rambunctious, but I'm not in that part of it. I'm not a threat to anyone. And neither is Rebecca; the local PTA doesn't go in for this sort of thing."

"Yeah." It fit the copycat _modus operandi_: see the case in the papers and take a great big fat hint, right down to sending the ransom note to the helpful newspaper reporter. Same reporter, too, that Kenneth Randall character who kept hanging around, hoping for some late breaking tidbit that he could feed to his readers. Got some, too; The Great Vervette was only too happy to indulge the reporter. Another good thing to say about the psychic: he kept the newsies off of Don's back. Even Charlie couldn't boast about that fact. Score one for the flake. The psychic flake, not the numbers flake.

Don needed to get with his team, to compile all the data and see what pieces would tie together. David was canvassing the playground where the kid had gotten snatched, Megan was doing the computer search for recently released kidnappers, and Colby was spearheading the electronics set up on the Smithers' phone. The original kidnapper had called the first set of distraught parents after they'd gotten the ransom note, and the instructions had been dutifully poured into the article that the reporter put out the next day. Though Don had to be honest with himself: that reporter guy had been the upstanding type, had handed the original note straight over to Don and his team—keeping a copy for himself—and waited until Don himself gave the okay before publishing it. It was sheer luck that someone had spotted the kidnapper and busted up his scheme ahead of time.

Okay, if this copycat dude was going to follow the script, there should be a phone call coming into the Smithers' home sometime tomorrow. Don vowed to be ready.

Of course, they'd been ready the last time. The call had come in, short and sweet and not long enough to be traced, and the FBI had been left staring at their shoes, hoping for a lead to come in. That break had come in the form of a nosy neighbor with an expensive set of binoculars.

"I'm going to leave a man here, just in case," Don promised the parents. "We'll have everything set up; the phone tapping, people canvassing the neighborhood. Everything." _Everything except another lucky break. That I can't deliver. Wish I could_.

"You'll find him, won't you?" Rebecca Smithers was clearly looking for comfort. Anything, anything to cling to.

"We'll do our best, Mrs. Smithers," Don promised. "Colby, you finished?"

"All I can do for now," Colby nodded. "Mr. and Mrs. Smithers, I'll be back in a couple of hours to complete the set up. You'll be right here?"

"We're not going anywhere," Bart Smithers Sr. promised grimly. He looked at his wife. "Just to the bank. I've got a million dollar loan to arrange."

"I'll have a case to put it in, one with a transmitter," Don said.

Smithers looked him solidly in the eye. "Let's get one thing straight, Eppes: I want your help, but I want my son back no matter what. If it takes a million dollars, he's worth it. Is that clear?"

Don didn't back down. "And once the kidnappers have your money, there's nothing to prevent them from killing your son. I'm sorry to put it that bluntly, but you need to keep as much control as you can. Delay, wait for us to put together clues, let us find your boy. If giving them the ransom is part of that delay, then fine. But work with us."

He felt like a heel walking out at that point, but they all knew that he'd done what he could there in the home. It felt like _deja vu_, like he'd walked this walk before.

He had. If the copycat stuck to the script, there'd be a phone call tomorrow. Which meant that he had the rest of today and tomorrow morning to come up with a miracle. In the original version, there'd been a nosy neighbor. Don had an uneasy feeling that he'd better not count on that happening again.

He pulled his team together. "What have we got?"

"Description of the kidnapper: Caucasian, probably six foot tall or a little under. Hair: dark blond and short, well-groomed. Wore a beige sweater-like shirt with a logo, although the kids couldn't tell me what logo," David said. "They were too far away. They said that Bart Jr. jumped off the swing and fell in the dirt. He got up, dusted himself off, walked back a few steps toward the road, which was when the kidnapper grabbed him."

Don pursed his lips. "Seem like a planned kidnapping, or a spur of the moment thing?"

"Definitely spur of the moment," David said. "One of the kids thought that the sedan had been cruising the area, said that it made a few circuits. He noticed it because he's into cars, and he thought that he could turn it into the Batmobile."

"Score one for comic strips," Don grunted. "So the kidnapper was just going for whoever he could snatch."

Colby agreed. "A kid old enough to be able to say his name, address, and phone number, so that a ransom note could be given to the papers, but not so old that he'd be able to identify the guy in court. Smooth."

"We may have a little more with the plates," David added. "I worked with the kids, and we think that there's an 'X' and a four in addition to the 'D' or 'O'. I wouldn't count on that too much, though. There was a lot of disagreement between the four year olds and the five year olds, and the first grader had no opinion."

"Best we've got. I'll put Charlie on that angle, see if he can pull anything out of his magic hat."

It was Megan who put into words what they were all thinking: "What about Ralph Maurer?"

"The psychic?" Don gave a tight little smile. "Charlie will throw a tantrum."

"Last time, he simply wandered in offering help," Colby admitted. "Said he'd had a 'vision.' Maybe he won't have a vision this time."

"Mrs. Smithers was asking," Megan pushed. "She's grasping at straws."

Don shrugged. "I'm not about to turn down any help. I won't call him—that's going a little far for the Bureau—but if she wants to talk to him I won't stand in the way. We can even give him what we've got—within reason."

Megan bit her lip. "I'll let Mrs. Smithers know."

"And Charlie?"

Don shrugged again. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him." _Or me_, he added mentally.

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"Variables," Charlie muttered, pouring through the three foot high print outs stacks that Megan had gotten for him. Headphones covered his ears, though no sound leaked out to suggest what the mathematician was listening to, and the pencil alternated between his fingers and his teeth. "Which variables?" He scrabbled a note in the margins, circling something that caught his attention.

Don watched him for a few moments. "Think he can hear us?"

"I don't think he even needs the headphones to block us out once he's in Charlie-land," Megan replied. "What is he doing?"

"Something about the correlation of variables. He thinks he can narrow down the possibilities of cars using the clues the kids gave us from the license plates and some other factors such as distance from the scene of the crime and location of various neighborhoods. If you can believe it, he had me pull out real estate listings, to see how expensive the houses were in the surrounding neighborhoods."

"Not bad," was Megan's thought. "He may be on to something, Don. Our kidnapper isn't likely to live in an expensive house. The more you own, the less likely you are to risk it for a crime like kidnapping."

"Whatever." Don stared at his brother, the mathematician darting around the table, latching onto this factoid and that, then whirling around to slap another Greek symbol onto the whiteboard. The computer in the corner was already groaning under the weight of all the data that had been entered. "As long as it works. Colby finished at the Smithers' house?"

"All set, and ready to go," Megan confirmed. "When the kidnapper calls in, we'll be able to trace the call. Assuming that he stays on long enough for the equipment to work."

"Charlie says that even with just a general area, he'll be able to narrow down the list of suspects for us. We don't need a complete trace."

"That's good." Megan's eyes roamed with Don's, watching the dark-haired man stop to tap in another set of data points for the computer to chew on.

"The Smithers call in The Great Vervette?"

"Yeah. He spent the night in Bart Jr.'s bedroom, picking up vibrations."

"Don't let Charlie hear you saying that," Don felt obliged to warn.

Megan sighed. "I can't believe that he's so resistant to Ralph. I mean, I know the guy is a little over the top—"

"A _little_?"

"Well, maybe a lot," Megan conceded. "But, at worst, he's harmless, and at best he's going to locate a child before something horrible happens. What's so wrong about that?"

"Keeps chanting that the guy's fraud. It's almost like a mantra to him, like he has to get me to believe it." Don shook his head. "It's almost like he has a vendetta against him, or something."

"Maybe he does," Megan mused. "Think about it, Don: Charlie's world is numbers. Math. Logic. Things fall into neat patterns. They have reasons for what they do. We may not understand the reasons, but we know that the reasons are out there, waiting to be figured out. These psychic things that Ralph does, they don't fit the pattern. And that's what has Charlie so upset. He can't predict how Ralph behaves, and it frustrates him."

"Maybe." Don stirred himself. "Look, he's coming out."

Charlie emerged from his den, pulling the headphones off with one hand and juggling papers with the other. There was no third hand for the pencil, so that stayed between his teeth. "Don," he tried to say around the yellow coated stick, "I've got a partial for you. It's not ready yet, but it's a start, and when I get more data, I'll be able to more closely pinpoint a location for you."

Megan deftly relieved him of the headphones. "What have you got for us?"

The pencil transferred to the now free hand. "I've been pulling the variables. I started with the search pattern of license plates, using the letters on the license plates and then eliminating those not belonging to black or dark blue sedans. I didn't dare eliminate too much; these are kids, and kids can sometimes get things wrong."

So can adults, Don wanted to add. "And—?"

The pencil went behind the ear so that Charlie could point to something squiggly on the paper. "Then I diminished the sample by eliminating those living in upscale neighborhoods. I used an assumption that neighborhoods with homes worth five hundred thousand and more were unlikely to have kidnappers, based on the additional criteria that you and Megan gave."

"You can probably cut that price tag down a little more," Don muttered.

"I can? Okay, I'll add that in to the next pass. But Don, that still leaves us with more than two thousand sedans to check out," Charlie said worriedly. "There's no way you can do that in a couple of hours."

"Two thousand?" Don winced.

"There's a lot of cars in Los Angeles alone," Charlie told him, cringing as if he personally were responsible for the twice daily traffic jams. "I didn't dare eliminate any cars based on ownership gender. It could be registered in a woman's name, yet with the male kidnapper using it."

"True. But hopefully after the kidnapper call in with his demands, we'll have some fresh data for you. That will cut the number down, won't it?"

"That'll work," Charlie nodded. "We'll get that kid back. Listen, I'll go play with the variables, see if the Parson's Postulate has anything to offer. I'll just head back in," he jerked his thumb toward the cubicle where Don had stashed him. "I'll work some more."

"You do that, buddy," Don said. Two thousand possible suspects? Was the man crazy? At this point, The Great Vervette was sounding better and better.


	3. Mind of the Beholder 3

The tension in the Smithers' household was thick enough to cut with a knife. There wasn't enough sofa space to hold all the participants, so Don was standing over Colby's shoulder, pretending to supervise the man as he fired up the circuits on the tracing equipment set up on a card table.

_Two_ sources of tension, Don grumped to himself, only one of which was legitimate: the Smithers. Bart Sr. and Rebecca were huddled on the blue sofa, Rebecca's face again tear-drenched and red. Don didn't think he'd yet seen her without the tremor in her hands. There was a suspicious red spot on Bart Sr.'s lip that suggested that teeth had all but bitten through with anguish. There were some families where you wondered if the parents even cared enough about their kids as something more than trophies to trot out and display; this wasn't one of them. No matter what else, you knew that this was a father and mother worth having.

Even the rest of his team had that tense set to their shoulders, the look that spoke of action in the immediate future. Colby had the primary responsibility; the tech equipment was his, and he would be tracing the call as soon as the bell rang. _And they're off, _echoed through Don's mind like an announcer at a horse race. Megan was trying to keep the distraught parents calm, and David was pacing the perimeter and peering out the window as if hoping that the kidnapper would be considerate enough to display the kid through the rhododendrons underneath the sill. Every black sedan that meandered past got the binocular treatment of its license plate.

All that tension was understandable, even acceptable. It would keep them that extra bit sharp, push the adrenalin through when needed. Don approved.

What he didn't approve of was the consultants.

"I _cannot_ _work_ with _that_ glowering at me," The Great Vervette announced, pointing a dramatic finger at Professor Eppes. "Remove your attitude at once, young man!"

"I need the data as quickly as possible," Charlie snapped back. "Without additional information, I can't refine the equations—"

"I will _not_ be able to _find_ the child if that _non-believer_ is present—"

"I'm a legitimate consultant with a string of successes—"

"—who couldn't find a pig in a blanket—"

"Don, I _told_ you about this fraud—"

"I feel quite faint," The Great Vervette announced, setting a hand to his forehead. He toppled over, carefully managing to land in a seated position on the other sofa in the room. "I require something to calm my nerves."

"Water?" Rebecca Smithers jumped to her feet, grateful to have something to do.

"Yes, please. With ice."

"Perhaps wine would be better," Kenneth Randall suggested. "It would settle your nerves."

The Great Vervette flashed the big reporter a grateful glance. "Yes, that would be wonderful. I will require something to settle my spirits in order to work." He turned a disdainful glare upon the mathematician who had _dared_ to pollute the psychic atmosphere with his derision.

Charlie snorted.

In Don's opinion, this was rapidly turning into a circus. At the Smithers' request—orchestrated, no doubt, by The Great Vervette—the reporter Kenneth Randall had joined the group for exclusive coverage of the event for his readers. Don had reluctantly agreed after extracting a promise that nothing would be released without his express approval and, to give the reporter credit, Randall had acquiesced without a fight. It was better than trying to keep the case under wraps with Randall butting in, Don reasoned, and with The Great Vervette playing to the house it was a given that information would leak out like a sieve. Don would strive for whatever control he could get. And the reporter had already demonstrated that he could take orders from the FBI.

The Great Vervette pushed. "Please remove that man!" he begged, pointing once again at Charlie who sat glowering over his laptop. Even the laptop gave off a disdainful beep. The Great Vervette drooped on the sofa. "He's giving me a headache. I shall not be able to find your son if he remains!" Ralph sipped daintily at the glass of white wine offered to him, pinky stuck in the air. "Thank you, my dear," he told Rebecca. "This is delightful. Most kind of you." He sipped again. "I am most distraught," he murmured. He placed a limp hand against his forehead. "I cannot think."

Rebecca's eyes flashed in alarm, and she turned an entreating look at Don, the senior agent. It was crystal clear what she wanted.

This was _so_ not good. Charlie would never forgive him. On the other hand, if the kid was never found, the FBI and the Smithers and the rest of the world would never forgive Don. And Charlie could get his data just as easily back at headquarters. And they were family. Blood thicker than water, right?

He cleared his throat. "Uh, Charlie, would you mind…?"

Dr. Charles Eppes most certainly did mind. Being thrown out of a house in favor of a charlatan _by his own brother_ was akin to requesting an audience with a rabid dog not wearing a muzzle. Dark eyebrows furrowed. Psychic daggers flew across the room, and they weren't from the resident psychic.

Don let his eyes shift to the Smithers and back, pleading silently with Charlie not to make a scene. The parents had enough to deal with, and if playing with the nice psychic made them feel like they were contributing, couldn't Charlie just let them have their fantasy? And, no matter what, The Great Vervette _had_ found the previous kid. Would it really be so bad for Charlie to do his work off-site? It wasn't as though the mathematician really _needed_ to be here…

Charlie set his jaw. "I'll wait in the car," he said. "Let me know when you need me." Mild delivery. Iron control. Only Don could guess what it cost his brother to say that. And Don didn't want to imagine what it would cost Don himself once out of earshot of the Smithers. _I'm in for it now…_

"Think they'll be on time?" David broke the stalemate of silence that crested through the room in Charlie's absence. "The kidnapper, I mean."

"We'll find out," Don grunted, trying to re-focus on the case; trying not to think about the slight figure trudging out to Don's Suburban to wait like a child sent to his room. A quiet bang from outside informed him that Charlie was now sitting in the front seat, fuming. The laptop had gone with his brother; _play solitaire or something, Charlie. Take out your frustration on that. Can't you see that I had no choice?_

"This is a copycat," Megan said. She too was trying to ease the discomfort that still pervaded the room. "If at possible, he'll try to maintain the same timeline as the original. Chances are, he'll use the same wording on the note. That was reported in your article, wasn't it, Ken?"

"Yes, it was," the reporter agreed. He slicked a hand through dark hair, pushing it out of his eyes. As one of the largest men in the room, he'd elected to remain standing. Others needed the available seating more than he did, and he would take up more than his fair share of the sofa if he tried to sit. "It was one of the pieces that gave me the lead on page one. None of the other papers had it."

Yeah. The article had published all the details, right down to the phone call that the previous victims had received and rumbled on through to The Great Vervette finding the little girl. Randall had been thorough. Inquiring minds, and all of that. Nice and easy for any copycat kidnapper who happened to come along.

Could have been worse. It could have been a smear campaign for the FBI, with Don's name up there in lights. But Randall had been very even-handed, almost complimentary, about the professionalism of Don's team. Whatever his motives, Randall was not out to rub any FBI noses in the dirt.

Right on schedule, the phone rang. The electricity that shot through the room could have fried an elephant. Don held up his hand, waiting for Colby to give the go ahead.

Lights flashed on the circuit board. Colby nodded.

"Pick up the phone," Don directed, putting calm into his voice for the father. "Try to draw him out. Keep him on the phone as long as possible. And demand to talk to your son." _See if he's still alive_, went unsaid.

Bart Sr. nodded, his face pale. He picked up the phone. "Hello."

Colby put it on speaker, hands darting over the circuit controls.

"I have your son. Do you have the money?"

"Almost. It will take another two hours to get it together." That was Don's coaching. Stall for time. "I want to talk to my son."

"Bring the money to the park. Leave it on the bench and go. If I see anyone in the vicinity, I will kill your child. You will be contacted after I have the money as to where you can find your boy."

"My son," Bart Sr. tried to demand. "I want to talk to my son!"

Click.

"Lost him," Colby reported tersely.

"The trace?"

"Not long enough for a complete tracing." Colby's fingers danced over the circuit board, teasing out the information that he could. "I've got a partial. A general area."

Don could feel the reporter's eyes boring into him. "Good work, Colby. Get that to Charlie; see what he can make of it."

Bart Sr. was next. "We don't have any time, Agent Eppes," he said, desperation edging his voice. "I have to take the money over to the park."

"The briefcase is ready," David slipped in. "We've got a tracer on it, and the money has been marked."

"Listen to me," Don said carefully. "This guy wouldn't let you speak to your son. Do you understand what that means?"

"I know exactly what it means!" Smithers grated out. "But if there's _any_ chance at all of getting my son back, then I'm going to take it! Do you understand _that_, Agent Eppes?"

"I understand," Don replied soothingly. "Believe me, that's the first thing, and the most important thing, that any of us want. But we have to look at this realistically: once the kidnapper has the money, he has no reason to return your son. You have to give this guy a reason to keep your son alive. Do you hear me on this?"

Bart Sr. closed his eyes tightly. Don recognized the move: it was designed to hold a scream of anger and despair. But it wouldn't help, wouldn't get his son back.

Don didn't push further. "Go ahead and make the drop. Our people have the briefcase ready with a transmitter in it. Once we have your son back, we can move in on the kidnapper."

"I don't care about the money." As if that would help.

"I know you don't." Don gentled his voice. "Do what the kidnapper says. Stall for time; try to keep him talking if he shows up. You're going to wear a wire so that we can monitor the situation, take down what he says for clues. Are you ready for this?"

"Is anyone ever really ready for a situation like this?" Bitterly.

Point of no return. Further discussion would avail them of nothing. David helped put the transmitters onto bare skin, taping it down so that there were no tell-tale wires or bumps. Colby tested the circuit, making certain that the team would be able to hear everything, that all the words and sounds would be transferred onto a digital recording for later playback. Hopefully it would be a record of what went right. Worst case scenario, they could play and re-play it in a frantic search to save a little four year old boy's life.

It was Megan that Don owed his continued existence to. Silently she gathered up the information that Colby's tracing equipment had won for them, taking it out to the Suburban where Don's brother waited in infuriated solitude. And that was going some, Don reflected soberly. Megan was one of The Great Vervette's biggest fans on the FBI team. She had been the one to tell them how Ralph Maurer, AKA The Great Vervette, had been able to figure out her family history, what college she'd gone to, all things that he shouldn't have been able to know.

Yet he had, and had followed it up with similar recitations for each of the team, even correctly guessing where Colby had a scar from when he'd broken his leg as a kid. With the man's flamboyant style Don could see how Charlie would label The Great Vervette as a fraud, but Don himself was having a hard time figuring out how he did it. The most sensible explanation was that The Great Vervette was the real thing. And the most sensible plan of action was to treat him with respect.

And, no matter what, it gave Mrs. Smithers something to do, something to feel useful over. She fussed over the man, giving him whatever he asked for, handing him one of Bart Jr.'s favorite toys so that he could 'find' her son through his 'psychic aura'. Don watched the pair for a few moments to assure himself that they wouldn't interfere with the official efforts.

Megan re-entered the house, the data she'd jotted down missing, so Don assumed that Charlie had swallowed his anger, accepted the information, and was now plugged into the car battery with his laptop, working his own sort of magic. Megan's eyes were unreadable.

"How'd he take it?" Don kept it quiet, so that the others couldn't hear.

Megan sighed. "Want me to drive him back instead of you?"

"That bad?"

"He wasn't a happy camper, Don."

Don winced. "What was I supposed to do, Megan? The Smithers wanted Ralph in on this. They're desperate."

"Lose-lose situation, Don. No matter what, you were going to hurt someone. Charlie was the one who could best afford to be hurt." She shrugged helplessly. "_I_ don't blame you."

"Charlie does."

Half-smile. "Charlie doesn't see the world as you and I do. For him, it's black or white. Understanding that there are things not meant to be understood is not part of his character. That's part of what makes him so good at math: he's tenacious. Problems have solutions; it's just a matter of time and effort to solve them."

"For him, maybe," Don grunted. "The rest of us have to live in the real world." He looked straight at her. "Megan, I would take it as a real favor if you would bail me out on this one with Charlie."

"Consider it done, Don. Just remember that you owe me one."

"Two," Don nodded fervently.

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Don set up his perimeter well outside the confines of the park, placing his people where he hoped that the kidnapper wouldn't see them. The command van itself he put onto a distant hill where a telescope replaced the field glasses and a video camera hidden in the trees gave him an up close and personal view of the surroundings.

The park was pretty, with a small sand lot for toddlers to play in. A small sand castle had already fallen back into a pile of pebbles under the hot sun. For a change, the place was empty; too many parents were too well aware of what had occurred, and weren't willing to take the chance that their own child might be next. Well-watered trees covered over the area, blocking the worst of the sun's harsh summer rays with giant green leaves, an occasional bird chirping in the branches but most too over-heated to do more than flutter to another branch to get out of the direct sunlight. It looked peaceful.

Appearances were deceiving. Tension radiated from every one of the FBI agents, from the LAPD people brought in to help with the perimeter, and from Smithers himself. Don found himself taking more than one deep breath, letting it slowly out through his nose, to still the tremors in his hands.

He watched the scene closely. Smithers was following the instructions to the letter, not deviating one iota. He strode into the clearing where three benches sat, legs plunged into concrete to keep the benches from mysteriously vanishing in the night. He carried the brown briefcase that David had set up for him, and Don knew that Colby, in the van, was already tracking its movements. David was almost a mile away, on the other side of the clearing, with his own set of field glasses, ready to charge in from the opposite direction. The FBI was prepared.

Megan had been appointed to keep The Great Vervette under observation and, incidentally, keep track of the reporter Ken Randall. Both had been left at the Smithers residence with Rebecca Smithers and the older daughter, one to search for the psychic aura and the other to search for the story surrounding the search for the psychic aura. Megan's job was actually to stay with Mrs. Smithers and be present in case the kidnapper inexplicably called back, but every member of the team knew her real goal: prevent the psychic and the reporter from interfering with the current operation. If the psychic could pull another miracle out of his hat and locate the boy, more power to him. Don wanted to know immediately if the kid was found. Made it easier to decide when to move in on anyone that he had under observation with a briefcase under his arm containing a million dollars in marked bills and a transmitter.

Time for that later. Don focused his attention on the scene below, Smithers walking into the clearing and sitting down onto the bench, the briefcase prominent beside him. He set the case onto the bench and looked around.

"I can't see anyone." His voice was full of anguish. Don wished that he could have set the man up with an earpiece, just to offer words of comfort, but it would have been too dangerous. Priorities: get the son back alive and well. Hurt feelings and money were secondary. Smithers had whole-heartedly agreed, but that didn't make it any easier on the father.

"I do," murmured Don's own earpiece. Don could just barely make out David from across the park. "I have a male, approximately five ten, blond, early twenties, heading in Smithers' direction."

Don tightened. "Look alive, people. No one moves until my signal. We let him take the money, we see about how to get the kid back. Nobody moves until I say so. The kid is the priority."

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"How's it coming, Charlie?" Colby didn't take his eyes off of his own screens, watching both Smithers on the monitor and the little green blip that represented the briefcase and its transmitter on another. There were several screens in the van, and Colby was watching all but the one attached to Charlie's laptop. It was getting stuffy inside; Colby had turned the van engine off to prevent the noise from alerting the kidnapper, which meant that there was no air conditioning to keep them human in the heat.

It didn't bother Charlie. "Getting closer." The dark tousled head didn't lift from its own screen. Fingers tapped away frantically, urging greater speed from the laptop. "I think I may have narrowed the list of suspect sedans down to twelve."

"Nice." It was. Twelve sounded like a lot, but it was a heck of a lot better than two thousand. "Maybe we can find the sedan in the area, get a better license plate, in case this bozo slips through our fingers."

"Maybe." More fingers tapping. "Got it!"

"How many?"

"Ten possibilities. All dark sedans with the appropriate letters in their plates, all registered to people living in lower class neighborhoods, more likely to commit a crime of this nature."

"Don." Colby tapped the key to open a channel to his team leader. "Charlie's come up with a list of suspects."

"How many?"

"Ten."

Pause. "Tell him: good work." The sound came in loud and clear over Colby's equipment, loud enough so that Charlie could hear. Colby turned halfway to make sure that the consultant had heard it, nodding. "We'll see how it goes down here, then start running those leads."

"Not now?" Charlie asked.

Colby cut the transmission. "Not enough manpower. We may get lucky; they may let the Smithers kid go once they have the money. We can still use your leads, Charlie. We'll be able to track them through the money and arrest them."

"Right." Charlie bent back over his laptop.

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"I feel him!" The Great Vervette announced, waving his empty wine glass in the air. "I feel his aura!"

Megan blinked. That had come out of nowhere. But wasn't that why the Smithers wanted him? Because he could pull stuff like this out of the air? And it wasn't as though this was an exact science. According to Charlie, this wasn't science at all. "We'll take my car." She pulled out her cell, tapping in speed dial. "Don, it's Megan. Ralph has something. I'll keep you posted."

"Keep it tight, Megan. We have a bogie. Timing'll be close."

"Got it." Megan snapped the phone shut. "Let's go."

They piled into Megan's car, the FBI profiler taking the wheel. Ralph directed her through a series of winding roads and seemingly endless turns, his eyes half-closed and sitting in the front passenger seat. Megan could feel the reporter's eyes boring through her, assessing her moves as she followed the instructions of the psychic, watching her closely. Megan wondered how the newspaper article would read. Would it be something to the effect of: _the attractive FBI profiler, her hair swaying across her shoulders, sped to the scene that the miraculous Great Vervette saw in his mind_, etc. etc.? Certainly that would be preferable to '_those bumbling FBI idiots_'. Randall too had been good to the FBI team.

"Here," Ralph said suddenly. "Stop the car. I need to get out."

"He's here?" Rebecca Smithers had insisted on coming along.

"I _feel_ him. He is close."

They piled out of Megan's car, The Great Vervette almost sniffing the air like a psychic bloodhound. Randall's pencil scratched against his notepad. Megan unsuccessfully attempted to lean over just far enough to see what the man was jotting down, but the markings on the page were less legible than Charlie's chicken scratchings. She gave up in disgust.

They made an odd grouping of four: the FBI agent, the psychic, the reporter and the mother. But not one of them stopped; a child's life was at stake. It wasn't particularly good FBI procedure but, as Don had said, if it works—do it! Because nothing else was coming close, not the license plate clues that they were tracking down, not the phone tracings, and not Charlie's numbers.

Ralph had led them to an area far outside the outskirts of Los Angeles, the high desert reaching into the eastern mountains. It looked desolate to Megan's eyes; there was nothing to see but a few rolling hills and the occasional left-over boulder from some cataclysmic event a few millennia ago. A single tall cactus was the only sign of life standing tall in the blazing desert heat. Megan thought about the sole bottle of water baking in the trunk of her car and wondered how she could possibly pull it out without collecting dour glares from Ralph. She sighed; the water could stay where it was. At best, she could re-chill it at home and at worst, they'd need it for little Bart, Jr., assuming that Ralph had once again pulled off a miracle.

A miracle that Charlie was insisting was a fraud. Don had told her about his arguments, about how psychic talents resisted examination by scientific methods. About how no one claiming psychic powers had ever been able to reliably perform tasks that couldn't be done through trickery. In other words, no proof. Of course, Charlie would go on to say that there wasn't any proof that psychic powers _didn't_ exist, just that no one had yet proven that they did.

Scientific testing, that's what Charlie had wanted. Proof that psychic powers were present and could work and could work again. A single occurrence could be random. Probabilities talked about one chance in a million, but there was always that one chance. Charlie had told Don that proof would be if The Great Vervette could reliably find child after child.

This could be that proof.

Megan hid a smile. Professor Charles Eppes was not going to be a happy camper if The Great Vervette, with all his grandiose gestures, found the Smithers child. And he most certainly wouldn't be pleased if his numbers couldn't do the same thing. The smile tried to broaden to a grin. Charlie'd be impossible to live with. Don was lucky to have his apartment to escape to.

More boulders. Ralph led them to rock after rock, peering around, looking for who knew what. As for herself, Megan listened. Listened for a child's cry, sobbing into the darkening afternoon, listened for the sounds of any movement. She heard the rustle of wings as a ground bird took off in hurried flight, saw the lazy circles of a vulture high above in the air. And, most of all, she felt the hot sun beating down on her shoulders.

_Knew I should have used the heavy duty sun block this morning_.

"Here." The Great Vervette's voice was hushed.

'Here' was a large boulder. Behind it, Megan could see the dark entrance to some sort of den.

"How could he get into there?" the reporter, Ken Randall, asked. "The boulder's in the way."

"He's in there," The Great Vervette insisted. "Remove the boulder!"

Mom had a more direct method for testing The Great Vervette's hypothesis. "Bart?" she called. "Bart, are you in there?" Her voice cracked on the last word.

Not words, but muffled sobbing emerged.

"He _is_ in there!" Megan gasped. "Quick, get this boulder out of the way!" She darted forward, grasping at the rock. It was heavy, and massive. Rebecca Smithers too, manicured nails forgotten, hauled at the boulder, desperate to get to her child.

"Let me help." Randall appeared beside them, broad shoulders inserting themselves between the two women. He reached, longer arms able to get better purchase, fingers seeking the nooks and crannies to grab onto. The three of them heaved. The boulder inched back.

"That's it!" Megan cried. "We're getting it!"

"We're coming, Bart!" Rebecca called out. "Mommy's coming, Bart. It's going to be all right!"

Inch by inch, the boulder reluctantly allowed itself to be pulled away from the shallow cavern. With every sliver of distance, it became easier, Randall able to get better purchase on the boulder and used strong muscles to pull it away.

Megan, the slenderest one there, squeezed inside. Bart was there; the resemblance to his mother was unmistakable. The four year old was tied, hand and foot, with a rough gag muffling everything except his tired sobs.

No time to waste. Megan gathered the boy up in her arms, pushing him out through the opening into the waiting embrace of his mother.

By the time Megan herself squeezed back out, the ropes were off and Bart Jr. was hugged to his mother, looking as though the two wouldn't be parted for the next decade. Given the circumstances, Megan was sure that that exaggeration wouldn't be far off.

Megan's job wasn't finished. She pulled out her cell. "Don?"

"Megan?"

"We got him."

"Alive?"

"Alive," she confirmed with weary satisfaction.

"Good work, Megan. _Damn_ good work."

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"Eppes, to all teams. The boy has been found. Repeat: the kid is alive and well. We move in on my signal."

"Got 'im in sight," David reported from his position. "Suspect advancing, approaching Smithers."

Words whispered into Don's earphone, transmitted from the small electronic box hiding in Smithers' pocket. Dad didn't know that his son had been found, Don reminded himself. There was still plenty of fear in the man's voice. Smithers was going to play along with the kidnapper as though his son's life depended on it. In the father's mind, it did.

"All units, move in with caution," Don directed. "We don't know if this guy is armed. The original had a boatload of weapons; let's play it as though the copycat has an arsenal in his back pocket. Got it?"

Murmured assents whispered in through the earpiece. From his position high on the hill, Don could see the stealthy movements of the FBI agents easing forward, surrounding the tableau below, enclosing the father and the kidnapper in a circle of justice.

Don too picked his way down the slope, two other agents behind him, all with handguns already in hand. The trees covered their approach, the grass muffled their footsteps. The kidnapper was already within speaking distance of Smithers, the man actually a kid barely beyond his teens, sandy blond hair artfully greased into a fake punk look. There was a hint of pink at the tips of the blond ends.

Don could hear the interchange between Smithers and the kidnapper.

"You've got something for me?"

"Right here." Don saw Smithers indicate the briefcase, the movements partially hidden through the tall brush. "Where's my son?"

"Not here, that's for sure."

"I want my son!" Smithers' voice began to rise. Hysteria wasn't far behind.

No way out for the kidnapper. "Move!" Don ordered into the microphone. "Move in!" He jumped into the clearing, the other two agents behind him, all with pistols aimed at the kidnapper. Out of the corner of his eye he saw David and his team secure the other side. "FBI! Freeze! You're under arrest!"

"Yeah, yeah, you got me." The kidnapper lazily put his empty hands up in the air.

"On the ground, hands behind your head, fingers laced," Don snapped. The gun didn't waver. He advanced, keeping his attention on the gun, making sure that Smithers didn't get in the line of fire.

Smithers was still terrified. "Eppes! My son."

"Safe."

That was all that it took. The blood drained out of the father's face, enough so that Don was momentarily concerned that the man would pass out in front of him. But the bench was there, and Smithers sank onto it, overcome.

Don had more immediate concerns. Holstering his gun and careful not to get in the line of fire of David and the others, he pulled first one hand then the other behind the suspect's back, slapping on the cuffs.

"Hey, take it easy," the suspect complained. "I bruise easy."

"You have the right to remain silent," Don snarled, trying not to let the relief he felt leak out. This was going well. This copycat was clearly an amateur, and a poor one at that. "I suggest you use it. You're going to need a damn good lawyer if you don't want to spend the rest of your life in jail." He shoved the kidnapper all the way onto the ground, immobilizing him.

"That's my bad side!" the suspect objected. "Look, I told Vinnie I wanted to be shot from the right. Can't you hit your marks?"

What was this idiot talking about? Don shoved him further onto the ground, grinding the suspect's face into the dirt, securing the handcuffs. "We've got the kid safe, genius. You're going down."

"Little further," the suspect directed. "My agent says I look good with dirt smudges. The edgy look, you know?"

"No, I don't know." Don hauled him back onto his feet. "You working alone?"

The suspect looked around. "Damn, but you guys are good! Where'd you hide the cameras? For an independent film, you've got some expensive stuff."

Don began to get a sinking feeling. "What are you talking about?"

"The cameras, man! You hide 'em in the branches, so you can get a 3-D shot?"

Don flashed his badge in the suspect's face. "Listen, _dude_," he drawled. "You may not realize this, but you are in a whole heap of trouble. This is not Candid Camera. We really _are_ the FBI."

The suspect's face turned as white as Smithers. "What?"

"FBI, man." David stepped up, his own badge in his hand. "And this ain't made of tinfoil." He patted the suspect down, pulling out the wallet. "He's clean. No guns, just an ID. Jacob Stashov, of 1415B Cayoga Apartments."

Don put his face six inches from the suspect. "Well, Jacob Stashov of 1415B Cayoga Apartments, I suggest you start talking very fast, because right now you're looking at fifteen to twenty, minimum."


	4. Mind of the Beholder 4

"He's all that we've got," Colby grumbled. "I say we charge him."

"With what? Bad acting?" David asked. "In this town, that happens all the time."

"He's singing like a canary," Megan added with a sigh. "Don, it looks like Jacob Stashov got duped into making the pick up for the real kidnapper. He's eager to cooperate, and, frankly, the D.A. doesn't think that it's even worth prosecuting this case. Stupidity is not yet illegal. According to our suspect, Stashov took an acting job. He met with a casting agent, who told him that this would be an improvisational job for an independent film. He was told to meet a guy matching Bart Smithers' description, pick up a briefcase, and take the briefcase to the other side of the park. He was told that he was playing the part of Kidnapper Number Two. When he pushed for details, he was told that the 'kidnapper' was from Iowa, and to develop his own thoughts about the role, but to remember that the 'kidnapper' graduated in the lower half of his high school class."

"Does this sound for real?" Don asked. "I mean, how stupid do you have to be to take that on face value? He doesn't meet with the director, no make up, no props?"

"Probably thought it would be his big break." Megan shrugged. "When you're that desperate to succeed in show business, you can overlook a lot of things. He's going through the mug books right now. He describes the man who hired him as six foot two, dark hair, blue eyes, well-built from working out—"

"Which describes half the men in L.A.," Don grumped. "Heck, it could be that reporter guy that keeps writing up The Great Vervette."

"Jacob Stashov doesn't meet the other parameters," Charlie pointed out from behind the desk. The laptop beeped at him; Don could have sworn the beep held a certain amount of affection for the mathematician. "He doesn't drive a black or blue sedan; he doesn't even own a car."

"But the Smithers kid said that someone matching Stashov's description was the one that snatched him," Colby argued. "Tall and blond and grown up. They get the kid calmed down yet?"

"Enough," Megan said. "We took a mug shot of Stashov, and showed it to the victim. Bart Jr. says that it _could_ be the guy who grabbed him, but I think that the little boy didn't get a good look at his kidnapper. His story dances around too much, and he gets upset and starts to cry whenever anyone tries to talk to him about it." She sighed. "I agree, there's an equally good probability that this may not be our man."

"Which means that we still have a copycat kidnapper on the loose," Don pointed out unhappily. "Whoever the guy is that hired Stashov. Anyone care to offer a suggestion on how to proceed?"

There were times when silence was welcome. This was not one of those times, Don reflected, but silence was what he got. His team looked at each other, smiles more than a little weak. Megan even went a miniscule shrug.

Not Charlie. His head was still buried in his laptop.

"Charlie?"

"What?"

"You got something, buddy?"

"Yeah." As if Don should have known better than to ask. Of _course_ Charlie had something. "Like I said before, I've been cross-matching the partials on the license plate with the make of the cars and the addresses of the owners. It's like the spatter diagrams that I've shown you before: the droplets splatter out from a central location, indicating the potential suspects in a large and random population. The difference here is that I've created an artificial covering for certain areas where the likelihood of the suspect being an _actual_ suspect is low. By eliminating certain neighborhoods, I've decreased the number of suspects while increasing the possibility of success." He beamed.

Don thought he followed the logic. Even more, Don knew that Charlie had been right in the past, and that would very likely be correct in the future once again. Don was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, no matter what it cost in terms of sibling rivalry. "You got the list of suspects? Give."

Charlie handed it over.

Don perused it swiftly. None of the names looked familiar. "Ten potentials. Megan, David: you take the first half. Colby and I'll take the bottom five. Run them through the computer for arrests and warrants, then see if we can talk to them. Look for a connection. There's not enough here to even _begin_ to ask for a search warrant, but that won't stop us from a little judicious snooping around. We've still got a copycat out there, people, that we need to stop. Anything else that we can check out?"

Again, his team looked at each other with blank stares.

"Well, actually, Don: yes."

"Charlie?" His brother, now an FBI investigator? Don swallowed his impatience. "What?"

"Ralph Maurer."

"The Great Vervette? Charlie, he _found_ the kid. Both of 'em, in fact."

"And we know, also for a fact, that he didn't get a dime of the ransom money," Colby added. "That was recovered both times."

"There's no way that he could be the kidnapper," David argued. "I mean, both kids said that the kidnapper was tall, with blond hair. A wig on his head, possibly, but Ralph Maurer is definitely not tall."

"Charlie," Don said gently, "I know that you don't believe in psychic powers, and I'm not going to argue with you over that. We can agree to disagree. But to try to set Ralph Maurer up as a suspect?" He shook his head. "Rule him out, buddy. He doesn't fit."

"Yes, but let's assume that I'm right." Charlie got to his feet, the better to make his point. "Hear me out," he pleaded. "Just for argument's sake, assume that I'm right. Assume that The Great Vervette is a fraud."

"All right, Charlie." Don leaned back in his chair, well accustomed to humoring his little brother. Not to mention that unhappy little scene where he'd had to ask Charlie to leave the Smithers' home; listening now could make up for that. Don could afford to waste five minutes on his brother to keep the peace. "Go ahead. Play Devil's Advocate. The Great Vervette is a fraud. Now what? What's his motive?"

"He's getting great publicity," was Charlie's prompt answer. "People love him. He's in the newspapers, on TV, getting blogged across the Internet."

"And—?"

"And—?" Charlie repeated, a blank look on his face. "And what?"

Megan took pity on the mathematician. Motivation was _so_ not his field. "Charlie, all that means is that Ralph is getting his fifteen minutes of fame. He's doing this for the purpose of feeling good, for helping people. He hasn't asked either set of parents for a dime. If he were a fraud, he'd be out for the money."

Colby snorted. "The only one making money is that reporter guy, Randall. I heard that his paper is paying him big bucks every time he brings in another story on Ralph, especially because that's the only reporter that The Great Vervette will talk to. Sweet deal for him. Being nice to the whacko who turned out not to be quite so whacko really paid off."

Don tried to be gentle. "Charlie, Ralph isn't our guy. He's not tall enough, he doesn't even come close to the description that we have of the kidnapper, either the original or the copycat, and he's not getting a thing out of this except for your fifteen minutes of fame. No motivation, buddy. No reason. No gain." He shrugged helplessly. "Sorry. He's not a suspect."

Charlie cast around. "What if he's in cahoots with someone else?"

"'Cahoots'?" Colby repeated, trying not to laugh. "I didn't know anyone used that word any more."

"Same thing, buddy," Don told Charlie kindly. "The ransom money has gone back to the parents both times. The bad guys lose. The parents win. No payoff for any criminal."

Charlie's face fell, although Don could see the light of determination still burning in those brown orbs. "There's got to be some other reason."

"Or it could be that we've run across the first genuine, scientifically certified psychic. Didn't you say something about being able to reproduce results over and over? Does this qualify?"

Charlie snorted. Then, seeing the looks on the others' faces, set his jaw grimly.

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"We could just mark this case closed," David offered helpfully. "Both kids returned to their parents, no money lost. One kidnapper dead and the other nowhere to be found. No more kids snatched."

"That's the important part," Don agreed. He rubbed his arm gingerly. It still hurt occasionally, even though he'd given up the sling days ago and the pain killers with it. Damn embarrassing, getting shot.

"Charlie? How's he taking this?"

"Let's just say that I haven't been getting my share of my father's lasagna." Don started to shrug, then thought better of it. "I wondered about take out, slipping into the house to steal the leftovers while Charlie's out of the house, but Dad would want to know why." He grunted. "Moved out of the house for almost twenty years, and I'm still asking for food packages from home."

"Which means that Charlie is still on his anti-psychic kick, and you're afraid to meet him at the house," David interpreted. "How long is he going to keep at it?"

"Wish I knew. I'm going through withdrawal. I'm even thinking about taking a cooking class," Don lied. "Where are we with our suspects?"

"Suspects? The ones that Charlie pinned down?" Colby moped. "They're all clean, all ten of 'em. They all have airtight alibis for the time periods in question. One even sold his black sedan a year ago; DMV hadn't kept up when Charlie ran his search thing. Bust, Don."

"We could just close the case as unsolved," Megan offered tentatively. "I mean, the kids are back safely, the media attention has died down, and we have no leads."

David's take was just as unhappy. "And I know that there's that gang shooting that the Area Director wants us to turn our attention to. We could be spinning our wheels for days on this kidnapping thing, getting nowhere. The gang thing could save a lot of people's lives with a quick resolution."

Don sighed. It was the nasty part of being the team leader. The righteous part of him wanted to bull ahead, to find the copycat kidnapper who got his jollies from terrorizing little kids and their parents. But the team leader part, the part that made the tough calls, told him that his team was right. That turning their attention to another case would be a better use of time and resources. That it would save more lives, more money, more…everything. He sighed again. "Close it. We'll call it unsolved."

_For now_, he added to himself with a sigh.

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Professor Larry Fleinhardt watched his younger colleague pace back and forth, adding a chalk mark here and a scribble there to the incomprehensible equations on the white board. "Charles, I fail to understand just why you feel the need to pursue this line of thought to this degree. No one is arguing with the data that you've presented."

Charlie paused in his deliberations. "Actually, they are, Larry. They're just not saying it." The next scribble had a little more force to it. "They've dropped the case without solving it. They're letting a kidnapper get away."

"They don't have much choice," Larry pointed out. "They don't have any leads to pursue. Everything has come to a dead end."

"Not everything," Charlie said grimly.

"Oh? Which lead have they not pursued? From your discussion, I haven't identified any additional tidbits of information."

"The Scatter Effect," Charlie said, his attention on the white board. "I'm pinpointing the highest probabilities for the location of where the suspect spends the most of his time. But it's not coming together," he added with a frown. "Something's wrong."

"An error in the math?"

"Possibly. I'll have to go through the whole thing, see where a negative should have been positive and vice versa." Charlie sighed. "That may take all night. And I've got a mid-term to administer tomorrow."

"And correct as well," Larry cautioned. "Don't neglect that aspect of it. While I recognize the value of graduate students performing menial labor, oversight is valuable and has become increasingly so as students become more vocal in pursuit of a four point oh average."

A snort was his only reply.

"Seriously, Charles, should you be spending your resources on this problem? Should you succeed in coming up with an answer, would Don and the others pursue it? Didn't you tell me that they closed the case?"

Furious scribblings on the whiteboard was his only answer.

"Are you caught up on your journal readings?" Oh so innocently.

That elicited a snarl.

"I had heard that Jackson Boltmeister published something contradicting the Eppes Convergence."

That earned Professor Fleinhardt a glare. "I don't have to respond to that tripe. There are enough _rational_ mathematicians to do it for me."

"Ah, but will they do it with your flare?"

"They'll do it without my spelling errors."

"Ah, yes, the limitations of spell check." Larry sighed. "Would that it recognized Greek. I heard that Professor Goldstein was planning to take the lead on the rebuttal to Boltmeister's attack."

That brought up the shaggy head. "Elisa Goldstein? She completely screwed up the response to Boltmeister's first attack on Robert Langerton's article! You can't be serious! I'd rather write the response myself!"

"Your choice, Dr. Eppes." Larry spread his hands. "The Spatter Equation, or the article response. I need not remind you which of those has an editorial deadline."

With another snarl, Charlie flung down the marker he was writing with and stabbed the power button to his computer.

"I take it you have elected to write the response yourself?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Charlie gave a final glare to the whiteboard. "I just hope that there aren't any more kidnappings until I can get back to it."

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Megan handed her fresh-off-the-printer report to Don for inclusion in the case file. "Another successful case closed. Is mine the last report you needed?"

"You got it." Don inserted it into the binder, closing the book on a short chapter of their lives and the beginning of a long sentence—twenty-five to thirty years—for a group of career criminals that they were all pleased to see off of the street. "The Area Director's pleased. We've got a string of closed cases this past week that the other teams are eying with envy. Feel like a promotion?"

"Not particularly," was Megan's response. "I like being on a winning team much more than heading up my own team that has to compete with you and yours. I'll stick here, thanks. How's Charlie? I haven't seen him for a week."

"We haven't needed him for the last two cases," Don said with a careful shrug. "And after all, he does have a day job at CalSci. It just _seems_ like he's here all the time." He forced a smile. "Shall I tell him you miss him?" _Like I've dared to show up on his doorstep?_

"Do that," Megan agreed. "When he's consulting for us, I feel like I keep tripping over him, but when he's not here…" She echoed the shrug but with a lot more casualness. "Let's just say that he keeps the place lively. He makes me think." She frowned. "There haven't been any more kidnappings that I missed?"

"Not a one," Don assured her. "They'd have dumped it on us fast." He paused. "Read anything more about Ralph?"

A tiny smile quirked upward. "Now that you mention it, yes. Sounds like he's doing nicely for himself. Not so much any article that I read, but I ran into that reporter that did the articles, what was his name?"

"Randall. Ken Randall." Don had a memory for names. Especially that one. There were a lot things burned into his brain about that case, including ordering a certain mathematician out of a certain house in front of an audience.

"That's it, Randall. Said that Ralph has opened up a small business as a psychic—just for 'entertainment purposes' to keep it legal for the state—and is seeing bereaved mothers and heartbroken long lost loves. Although Randall did mention that Ralph would love to come and 'consult' for us any time we wanted him to. Professional courtesy, you know."

"Right," Don snorted. "I can just see it now: him and Charlie, glaring at each other across the room."

"Like I said," Megan repeated, the corners of her mouth turning upward, "Charlie does keep things lively."


	5. Mind of the Beholder 5

"Charlie, I'm not sure that Don wants me giving this to you." Colby's tone was full of doubt. Which made sense, because Colby himself was full of doubt. "I thought that this kidnapping case was closed. Why don't you ask him for this stuff yourself?"

"Too busy," Charlie mumbled, leaving the question of whether he was referring to himself or his brother up in the air. He launched into the lecture, pulling the sheaves of data out of Colby's resisting hands. "I've checked and rechecked the math on the Spatter Effect, and my numbers are correct, but the answer isn't. Therefore one of the assumptions that I've made is incorrect or, at a minimum, incomplete. That means that I need to challenge each of the assumptions, come up with new parameters, and test those against the original hypothesis as well as conjecture a new potential thesis, possibly more, using both the Quantitative Analysis Statement as well as the Morrison Probability Double Curve." He lifted his shoulders with a grin. "We sometimes call the Morrison Probability Double Curve the Pitcher's Fast Ball. That's a pretty quick proof if you're pressed for time." He brightened at the thought. "Want to help with the data entry?"

Colby hadn't understood more than two words in ten of the lecture, but the last line was crystal clear: work. Even worse: work behind a desk. "No thanks," he said hastily. "Got a suspect to talk to. Before he gets away. Like right now. Sorry, gotta run."

Charlie watched the FBI agent hustle off with satisfaction. If he couldn't fend 'em off with math, then a simple request for menial labor worked just fine. Professor Eppes had tested and re-tested that hypothesis on students and found the results to be remarkably consistent over time. His most recent example of Colby demonstrated that it worked rather well on FBI agents, too. It was just icing on the cake that the 'Quantitative Analysis Statement' and that 'Fast Ball' nonsense had been made up on the spot.

Pity that he couldn't have gotten Colby to help with inputting the data. That was real.

But several hours later, the pattern had begun to emerge. As he had suspected—after being goosed by friend and colleague Larry Fleinhardt—the true answer lay not in the data but in the assumptions made about the data. In a fruitless effort to winnow out the extraneous data, he'd spread an artificial shield over part of the data, the part where 'rich' people lived, since it was deemed unlikely that anyone living in those areas would risk their assets by performing such a dangerous stunt such as kidnapping. But what if that assumption was erroneous? What if the assumption was correct but the parameter too narrow? What if Charlie broadened the search just a bit, closed just an edge of the shield over some of the data? What new lines of connection might appear?

'What' indeed. Six new names popped up, all of whom owned dark black or blue sedans with the suspect letters and numbers in the license plates. Six new suspects. Most of the names meant nothing to Charlie, but one stood out like a sore thumb.

And, boy, was that thumb sore: Ralph Maurer. AKA The Great Vervette.

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One really big advantage to cell phones, and actually all phones in general, was that you didn't haven't to look the caller in the eye. Sure, camera phones were out there, but at the moment Don was really glad that they weren't in popular usage because having to tell his little brother—the brother that Don had recently had to squash in favor of a psychic with a nose for lost and kidnapped kids—that the lead he'd worked so hard on wasn't going to go anywhere.

"Charlie, I'm sorry," he said, trying to keep it kind, wondering how long it would be before he dared show up at the house again. He was desperately missing his dad's cooking. Don's own efforts were getting more and more stale and unappealing. How had Don managed to live all those years in New Mexico by himself? Must be that his abused taste buds had finally grown back after being re-exposed to _real_ food. "I know it sounds good"—_lie_—"but the case is closed. I can't re-open it without another kidnapping."

"But this is another lead, Don. It's sound. It's based on math."

The desperation in Charlie's voice bit deep. Don winced. "I know it is, buddy, but the case is closed. It would take too much manpower to track it down, and for what? There's no guarantee that we'd come up with enough to nail anyone, even assuming that it's Ralph Maurer."

"But—"

"And, think about it, buddy. Ralph was with us when the phone calls came in. There's no way he could have made those phone calls. He's a psychic, not a ventriloquist."

"That's not funny, Don—"

"You're right, it's not," Don agreed, grateful to be able to agree with Charlie on something, _anything_, even if it was only a bad joke. "But I also have to look at this from a resources point of view. I've got cases that are hot right now, cases where I can take down criminals from drug pushers to gun runners. Those are people who are doing some damage _right now_, Charlie. If I get some extra time, I'll look into it," he promised with another wince, knowing that the chance of getting that extra time hovered somewhere between _slim_ and _none_. "I'll keep you posted."

"Don, he's getting away with it! And you're letting him!"

"I'm not 'letting' him do anything," Don snapped back. _Dammit, couldn't Charlie take a hint? Grow up, or something?_ "There isn't enough evidence to do more than smile nicely at the man, and bitching about it about it isn't going to change that. He has rock solid alibis, Charlie. _He didn't do it_. You need to accept that and stop making this a personal vendetta just because you don't approve of what he does for a living."

"This isn't personal—"

"No? It sure sounds like it to me. In fact, if this case were open and you were a field agent, I'd be yanking it out from underneath you. You're letting your feelings get involved, Charlie. It's closed. Back off. Drop it," Don finished. "Charlie, the case is closed."

"Don—"

"I'm serious, Charlie." So was his gut, squeezing and tightening and knowing that lasagna had just gone off the menu for another month until Charlie forgave him for those words. Maybe two, until Charlie saw the sense of why Don had to do it. "I'm not saying this as your brother but as your FBI team leader. Drop it."

"Right. Drop it. Let him get away with it." Charlie clicked off with an angry abruptness. Don sighed. He knew that tone in Charlie's voice, had been hearing it since they were kids. It was sound of his little brother knowing when Don was putting him off over something, something that Charlie would never get. Once it had been a chance to bat in one of Don's pick up games: it had been a bunch of neighborhood kids after school, and eight year old Charlie had tagged along. Even then, Charlie had adored his older brother, although it was only now that an adult Don could recognize it. Charlie had had that same note in his voice when the game ended and Charlie still hadn't had a chance at bat. The score had been too close, it had always been two outs to the inning, it had always been yada, yada, and a few etc.'s.

Don sighed again. Charlie was an adult now, knew how to take another one of life's little disappointments. Don himself had had plenty of practice. Look at this kidnapping thing: did Charlie think that Don himself was satisfied at leaving it unsolved? Sometimes you had to let things go.

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Charlie glanced at the clock on the wall: almost four o'clock. No more classes, not even to cover that evening course Advanced Concepts in Trigonometry that Langerton's graduate student was having trouble teaching; a couple of the sophomores were proving that they were smarter than the Ph.D. candidate. Normally Charlie could spend the rest of the day working on some of his own proofs, his own research into Cognitive Emergence. Usually he then went home but just as often as not he'd stay late into the night when some data point caught his interest. Missing dinner was a routine occurrence. His father would simply shrug and stick the leftovers into the fridge.

Well, it could be one of those occurrences tonight, too. Don might not have the time to follow up on this lead, but that wouldn't stop Charlie from swinging by Ralph Maurer's neighborhood. Not investigative stuff, no. That was Don's area of expertise, not Charlie's. Charlie wasn't an FBI agent, didn't know the first thing about the details of crime, wasn't anything more than a math consultant. But that didn't mean that he couldn't go where he wanted. And Charlie wanted to walk along the road where Ralph Maurer lived. Just to see it, mind you. Nothing more. Just to get a feel for what his analysis had told him. That was what field work for consultants was. To see things, not to investigate. Investigation could be dangerous, meant for properly trained field agents.

Don wouldn't ever know that Charlie had been there. Ralph Maurer wouldn't ever know, and neither would anyone else. Charlie turned the wheel of the car, seeing the map in his head, the directions laid out as neat as a quadratic equation with two variables. As far as Don and anyone else knew, Charlie had done as he was told. He'd dropped the case. And he really had. He wasn't here because of the case. He was here just to verify for himself what his numbers were telling him. This was to keep himself sharp, so that he could be a better consultant.

The neighborhood was well-to-do, with small but tasteful houses dotting both sides of the street. Brown spots marred several lawns here and there, leftover from the summer drought, but the plants designed for desert regions were thriving. A hummingbird feeder stuck out of a post and Charlie caught a glimpse of a blur of wings and an iridescent sparkle of bright feathers whirring around it. A dog chained to a post lifted a lazy head to watch the car go by.

Not enough. There were several cars parked along the sidewalk, and Charlie put his own in line, crawling out and locking the door. He needed the details, the smell of the environment, the feel of the cement beneath his feet. He needed to be outside, walking the pavement.

The sun beat down on him despite the lateness of the day. Another hour or two and it would disappear completely beneath the horizon, but for now it was content with slapping Charlie with a full dose of warmth augmented by a battery pack of heat rising up from the white concrete sidewalk. Charlie debated leaving his shirt in the car and letting his arms hang out of a tee shirt, but sighed. That would mean retracing his steps and unlocking the vehicle. No, better to simply walk through where he needed to go and then turn up the A.C. once he was back in the car. He wouldn't be long, and the humidity wasn't bad.

It was a pretty neighborhood. He could hear a bunch of kids splashing in someone's backyard pool, although he couldn't see them over the tall fence. A terrier yapped at him, thinking it was chasing him along the sidewalk behind its fence, satisfied once Charlie had ambled beyond the confines of its lawn. The corner rose bush designated the end of the dog's territory, but Charlie declined to sniff at the pink flowers, eager to stop the dog from growling at him. He wasn't afraid of being bitten, but he was concerned that someone might see him, wondering who the dog was barking at. And that the news would get back to brother Don, the same brother in the FBI who had told him firmly and more than once that this case was closed. _I'm not here as an FBI consultant, Don. I'm here because I'm curious._ Yeah, that reason would do, especially if Don never had the occasion to ask.

The Great Vervette lived in a nice little one story place, not the most expensive in the neighborhood but not the cheapest. A lot of care had been put into the place, freshly painted and the bushes pruned. A wafting of lavender came on the slender breeze—yes, there was the bush, tall purple flower stalks lifting their heads above the silvery green leaves. The back was fenced in for privacy, and Charlie could barely see the tall evergreen hedge all the way in the back which lifted the viewing angle up by several feet. There was a neat and tidy _for sale_ sign by the sidewalk; clearly The Great Vervette had done well over the last week or so with his new 'business' and was planning on trading up for a more spacious abode on the strength of his recent earnings. A few stray coffee cups sat at one corner of the fence, leftovers from the disappointed reporters hoping to follow in Ken Randall's footsteps and interview the psychic who had found the kidnapped children when the FBI—_and the math consultant! Grr!_—couldn't. The curtains were closed, no way to peek inside the house. Not that Charlie would, of course. That was going beyond what a consultant did on a field trip, unless the consultant was at a crime scene and specifically told to peek inside. Which this wasn't. No crime had been committed here, unless Charlie called Ralph's whole psychic business venture of fleecing the gullible public a crime. Which it was, but not by current legal definitions. Only Charlie's.

And there it was, sitting in the driveway, the car that had led Charlie to this point. Ralph Maurer drove a large black sedan, license plate 2-ADO-424. The sun beat down on this car as well, shining off of the black roof and re-radiating the heat upwards in shimmery waves. There was another car in the drive, a smaller vehicle in silver with a substantial scratch on the rear bumper. Charlie automatically noted its license plate as well in his head for later follow up. A client, perhaps, consulting The Great Vervette professionally? And Charlie used the word 'professionally' in jest. There was nothing 'professional' about The Great Vervette.

All right, Charlie had seen what he'd come to see. He'd seen the neighborhood, he'd identified Ralph Maurer's car as the car belonging to Ralph Maurer sitting in his driveway—just what had Charlie really accomplished? Charlie grimaced. Yes, what _had_ he accomplished besides the waste of a couple of hours? Did this prove that The Great Vervette was involved in the kidnappings of two children? Were there any low life types hanging around Maurer's house, waiting for Charlie to identify them as accomplices? Hardly. Not unless he wanted to call the man getting out of his car at the end of the block, briefcase in hand, a low life. Three piece suit, dark black hair still neatly combed at the end of the business day, showing evidence of working in an air-conditioned office all day, bringing home a bouquet of flowers for his wife/partner/significant other?

Charlie sighed. This really _had_ been a waste of time. Don would have been laughing at him if he knew what Charlie had been up to. At the very least, his brother would be angry and wouldn't hesitate to let Charlie know it. Charlie started to be very grateful that he'd taken all the precautions not to let anyone know where he was going. He just made a fool of himself, coming here. Maybe Don and Larry and all the rest were right: Charlie was going overboard on this psychic powers thing. Not that Charlie was wrong; no, psychic talents had yet to be conclusively proven. That wasn't just Charlie, that was the consensus of the scientists in the field. But to pursue one single example of pseudo-psychic fraud, just because The Great Vervette had gotten Charlie himself thrown off the case… yeah, it was way past time to go home. Go home, drop this psychic nonsense, and go back to working on his Cognitive Emergence theory. With any luck, the only person who would know that Charlie had just made a fool of himself here in this neighborhood was Charlie.

"Dr. Eppes. What a pleasant surprise."

If there was ever a time for cursing, now was it. Charlie knew that voice. Had heard it in his nightmares for the last few days. Had bitten his tongue on at least four different occasions to keep his brother from ordering him out of the room because of it.

He plastered the best smile onto his face that he could muster. "Mr. Maurer? I didn't expect to see you. What are you doing here?"

Ralph waved a hand at his house. "I live here. And you, Dr. Eppes?"

_Think fast_. "Looking around the neighborhood. I'm thinking of investing in some real estate, and I had heard that there were some houses up for sale," Charlie lied, hoping that his face was cooperating. "You live in this neighborhood? I hadn't realized. How is it? Think I should take a closer look?" _You're babbling, Charlie. Shut up._

"Absolutely," Ralph said with a broad and delighted grin. "As a matter of fact, I've just decided to sell my house. There's this little place out in the country that I've fallen in love with, and it would be simply perfect for business. Imagine people coming out into that delightful mountain air, able to project clean thoughts for me to follow. I suspect that I'll be able to do a much better job of helping people with their problems." He took Charlie's arm firmly. "You must come in and look the place over. I'm no real estate agent, you realize, to show the place properly, but you might find something to pique your interest."

"I don't know…" Charlie looked longingly back at his car. _Cover blown, you idiot._

"I insist." Ralph hung onto Charlie's arm. There was no way that Charlie could disengage himself without being rude or giving himself away. And then Don would find out, and the rest of the world, and how was Charlie going to squirm out of this one?

All right. Go inside, see the place, make a few light comments, and escape. Maybe he'd never see The Great Vervette ever again. The guy would sell his house, move out of town, and never darken Charlie's doorstep again. Or cross the threshold of FBI headquarters. One could always hope. The probabilities of such an action were…

Ken Randall was standing on the stoop of Ralph Maurer's house. Ken Randall, the reporter, the tall guy with dark black hair and pecs that Don had told him that Megan had commented favorably upon. The guy that looked like he could flatten Charlie with one hand behind his back.

Charlie kept the smile on his face. "Mr. Randall. I hadn't expected to see you here. I thought that you'd finished your articles on The Great Vervette." _I can't believe that Ralph Maurer's stage name came out of my mouth without choking._ He glanced around the living area, trying to act like a prospective house buyer.

Something jumped out at him: a portrait. A very large picture, done in oils, and very hard to miss. A portrait of Ralph Maurer and Ken Randall, arms entwined around each other, looking deeply into one another's eyes. There was a soft green sofa in the living room and a matching easy chair, and there was a table with green leafy plants on it in the background, but all that faded into obscurity. It was the picture that put it together: Ralph and Ken knew each other. They had known each other for a very long time, and in the Biblical sense. Evidence of Ken also being a resident of this house where Ralph lived was all over, from the extra large jacket hanging from the coat tree to the collage of Ralph and Ken photos tacked along one wall.

"You really shouldn't have come here, Dr. Eppes," Randall said.

Something else jumped out at Charlie: a thick pipe in Randall's hand. That pipe flashed once in the sunlight, just before connecting with Charlie's head.

_Hardwood floors_, was Charlie's only thought before pain rocketed through him. It was then that he realized that he was lying on that hardwood floor, being dragged further inside. _Good selling point for a house, those floors_. Those hardwood floors were about the only thing that he could perceive, because the rest of him was responding to every nerve insisting that agony was on the menu for the next several minutes. He tried to curl into a ball, praying for unconsciousness. _No such luck_. _Okay, we'll settle for not losing lunch_. Which also had a statistically large probability of occurring at the present time, even if Charlie's ability to calculate that probability had been temporarily put on the back burner.

"Is he dead?"

"No. Of course not." Nervously.

"You hit him too hard."

"Not hard enough, Ralph. Listen to him."

The groan, Charlie realized, belonged to him. Vision was definitely sub-optimal, but hearing was working. His arms and legs, however, could have belonged to someone else. Movement was out of the question. Someone dropped his feet, turning him over, pulling his arms behind his back.

"What are we going to do with him?"

"We have to do something." That grim voice, Charlie realized, belonged to Ken Randall. "How do you think he found out about us?"

"I have no idea. _You_ were there. _You_ know that _I_ didn't give us away."

"Whatever. What's done is done. We have do something with him."

"You don't mean…"

"Kill him? I hope not. If you have any better ideas, Ralph, I'd really like to hear them. This scam we're running is one thing, but murder is out of my league."

_Glad to hear that_. Another spasm of pain in his head forced out another moan. _Down, stomach! Behave_.

"Whatever it is, we have to do it fast."

"And that's his car down the block. We have to get it out of sight. Put it into the garage. The keys must be in his pocket." Charlie felt someone rummaging in the pockets to his jeans, helpless to resist.

"That means I have to pull out the lawn furniture. All of it, not just the table. Where do you want me to put it? We just got it taken in."

"I'll finish tying him up, then I'll help. Hurry it up, before someone sees it and questions why it's here. You can put the furniture in the back yard."

"All the way back there? I have to lug it that far? It's heavy!"

"It's not heavy, it's plastic. If someone asks what you're doing, you're taking it out to hose it down later. Clean it. It's white; people are always cleaning white things over and over. Hurry up, before this idiot wakes up."

"What if he starts shouting? Ken, you hit him!"

_Ralph, you sound absolutely delighted at the thought of male aggressiveness on the part of your significant other. I, on the other hand, as the recipient of the afore-mentioned aggressiveness—_

"I'll gag him, too. We'll figure this out. I'm not giving up on this yet. We've got too much to lose. We just have to come up with a plan for getting him out of the way without killing him."

"You won't kill him, will you? Ken, you can't!"

"Not a chance. Like I said, Ralph, I don't want to go to jail but at this point we have to do something. We've got too much to lose."

_Me, too. My life, for one thing. My brains, for another_. _And let's not mention lunch—_

_Oops._

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Don looked glumly at the stacks of financial data piled on the table in front of him. "When do you think the bean-counters over in Finance will be able to spare someone to help us figure this out?"

David too didn't look happy. "I ran into Agnes. She said they're backed up over the Enron case. It could be a week or more."

"The Enron case? The CEO guy's dead, the case already finished in court, and they're still not through with it?"

David shrugged. "That's what Agnes said. Something about who owed what to whom, and what was left over for the employees and the stockholders. Then she started to sound like Charlie, chanting numbers and figures until I ran away in self-defense. Speaking of whom, have you been able to contact him yet?"

"Nope." Don frowned. "He's not picking up on his cell, or his office phone, and Dad said that he's probably working late at the office. Whatever it is, it's caught his attention. Dad told me that Charlie didn't come home last night."

"He's not still trying to convince you that Ralph is a fake?"

"Don't think so. I had to squash him yesterday. Told him the case was closed—again, he never listens—and that even if he came up with something on Ralph, chances were pretty good that we wouldn't be able to track it down for a couple of weeks. Not unless there was a pretty compelling reason, such as another kidnapping. No, he's probably just pulling another all-nighter over some math theory or something."

"The usual," David sighed. "We pull all night stake-outs, but he pulls the all nighter's on proving this and that. Better him than me." He brightened. "I could mosey over to his office at CalSci, see if he's there."

"Nope. _I_ get to do that. He's my brother, and I'm leading this team. I'm the one who gets to escape this office and get out into the clean sunshine." Don picked up his jacket. This was the perfect opportunity to seek out Charlie and do some serious groveling. To be honest, Don owed it to him. There was that little scene at the Smithers' house that still hadn't been adequately atoned for, and, to be honest, a mathematician of Charlie's caliber could make a heck of a lot more per hour than Don's Bureau budget paid him. Don had once found a discarded offer letter from some big business types mentioning something in the six figure range. Then Don grinned at David. "But I can invite you to come along. I need to finish up this report, say an hour or so, and then I can grab you and the car. Works for you?"

"Thought you'd never ask!"

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The time passed in a long and drawn out blur. To say that his head ached was a gross understatement. Nuclear explosion came closer. Being stuck in Larry's diatronic cyclotron would be another apt description. His thoughts weren't whirling, but his head was. Even if the pain was gone, Charlie doubted that he'd be able to stand.

Normally Charlie would say that being alive was a good point. That he was pleased that the pair hadn't yet murdered him. But, under the circumstances, that fact was up for debate. His head hurt. His wrists and ankles hurt; the ropes were biting into his flesh, wrenching him into an uncomfortable pretzel. There was a gag in his mouth, and it was hard to breathe past it.

Charlie had no sense of how long it had been. He thought he'd passed out once or twice, but couldn't be sure. Things had happened. They'd carried him, still bound hand and foot, into the garage and tossed him into the trunk of a car. He suspected that it was his own car, but since opening his eyes made him even more dizzy and nauseous, he gave up on that part of figuring out how bad this mess was.

Then the car was driven somewhere. This time Charlie was grateful for the passing out part; every time the car turned a corner he was thrown against the side of the trunk to collect another bruise. Passing out meant bypassing the 'ouch' stage. Waking up meant having to cope with the heat inside the trunk, gasping for breath past the gag stuffed into him. _Yeah, thoroughly miserable. Don'd be laughing hysterically by now. See the stupid mathematician not listen to his FBI agent brother. Watch the numbers guy get whumped by the psychic guy and his reporter slash lover. Physically whumped now, not just socially. Charles Eppes, loser on all counts._

Why hadn't he listened to Don when Don told him that the case was closed?

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"Knock, knock."

Don looked up, hoping to see Charlie, realizing half a second later that it wasn't Charlie's voice. And that Charlie never indulged in a verbal 'knock, knock'. He simply barged in, laptop in hand, convinced that the rest of the world was as interested in his research as he was. Right now, Don would have been more than pleased to see his brother, with or without his laptop. It had been a little too long without that mop top skittering around Don's office like an elf on speed.

Instead it was The Great Vervette. What irony; Don wanted Charlie and instead he got the guy that Charlie couldn't stand.

"Ralph," Don said by way of a greeting. "Haven't seen you in a while. How are you?"

"Wonderful, wonderful," The Great Vervette burbled. "I really must thank you for allowing me to participate in my own little way in those kidnapping cases. I have had so many people come to me, asking for help in finding things. It's really quite rewarding."

Emotionally or financially, Don wanted to ask. But he merely said, "that's good to hear. What brings you by my neck of the woods? Not that it isn't nice to see you," he added, lying through his teeth.

"I'm not really certain," Ralph said. Don felt his 'spidey sense' tingling. What was the man up to? Don fought a frown. There was definitely something not right. But Ralph continued, "I simply had the _oddest_ sensation that I _had_ to come see you. You haven't, by any chance, had another kidnapping?"

"Not that's been handed to me," Don said. "Why? Have some parents contacted you, and not us?" His gut tightened. He could see that scenario happening very easily.

"No, no, nothing like that," Ralph hastened to reassure him. "It's just…well…I couldn't help but feel that something was going on. You _will_ call me if you hear of someone missing?" he asked hopefully.

"Certainly," Don lied once again. _Charlie'd kill me if he was missing and I called in The Great Vervette. He'd rather be murdered._ "You remember that people go missing every day? Maybe LAPD has something for you."

But hustling to finish the report and collect David to go and track down his errant brother took on a greater urgency after Ralph left. Not that Don really believed in this stuff, mind you, not when he needed to talk to Charlie. But that financial case was waiting, and he needed Charlie, and his 'spidey sense' was blaring and—oh, hell. Don was worried.


	6. Mind of the Beholder 6

As usual, Don elected to take the stairs when climbing up to Charlie's hole in the wall office, David trailing in his wake. It was faster, and, given the age and condition of the elevator, safer. They passed several students in the hall, one or two giving them a look—_little old to be taking classes, aren't you?_—but nothing out of the ordinary. The building was old by California standards, built almost eighty years ago, and the cinder block walls had been painted and repainted so many times that the paint was likely thicker than the blocks.

Still, it was Charlie's home away from home. Don's feet knew the way by heart, and he let them lead him to his brother's office, pushing the door open and letting himself in, ready to excuse himself if his brother was entertaining a needy student. He briefly held back at the sound of voices, but went forward when he recognized one of those voices as Amita's. Her presence wouldn't stop him; more fool Charlie who couldn't see how much she cared for him. _I should talk; me and my great love life_.

"I'm sure Dr. Eppes just got caught up in something," Amita was saying. Don caught sight of another dark head, one attached to a tall and dark and well-developed body with a grungy beard. _Better watch out there, brother, if you don't want to get left in the dust_. "I'll let him know that you were here. Does that problem make more sense now? You understand how to apply the significance testing?"

"I do now." That white-toothed smile was fit for a toothpaste commercial and full of an unvoiced invitation. But Amita dismissed the student, and turned her own smile onto Don and David. "Hi, guys. Come on in. Have you seen Charlie?"

"Uh, no." Don's own welcoming smile frayed around the edges. "We were looking for him. You haven't seen him?"

"He missed three appointments this morning, and I'm scrounging to cover his afternoon class," Amita said. She frowned, the exasperation not quite covered up. "He's not answering his cell."

"And he's not at home," Don added. "I know Charlie can get caught up in things, but this is going a little far even for him. Have you tried Larry?"

"First thing this morning, when Charlie's first appointment turned up," Amita told him. The exasperation melted as the implications sank in. "Don, I'm getting worried. His car's not in the parking lot."

"Which means that he's not here," Don said, thinking. Where could his brother have gone to?

"Should I start panicking?" Amita asked, ready to begin on the spot if Don gave the word.

"Not yet," Don hastened to say. "He could be anywhere. David, get on the horn. Touch base with LAPD, see if there were any accidents with John Does. I'll try the hospitals in the area."

"Charlie carried ID," Amita objected. "They would have called your father."

"Let's just start there, shall we?" Don didn't want to tell her that she was right. Don himself was listed as next of kin, and with his FBI background would have gotten a call if anything had happened to his brother. An unpleasant thought crept into his head: Charlie had NSA clearance, and that particular agency would not be best pleased to hear that one of its sometime consultants had gone missing. Don never knew when Charlie was working on something with national security significance, and there might be something worrisome going on that Don hadn't been told of, something that some enemy power might find intriguing. The NSA might even be displeased enough at Charlie's disappearance to send a squad of highly motivated agents to help Don track his brother down, leaving chaos and terror in their wake. A glance at David told him that the other man had just realized the same thing.

On the other hand, alerting the airports to keep foreign agents from removing one highly respected mathematician from his country of origin might be a very sensible precaution.

_Now who was letting things getting out of hand?_ There was a reason that a Missing Persons report wasn't filed for twenty-four hours. People showed up in that time period with perfectly rational explanations for their disappearance. And, let's face it: Charlie was one of the flakier types around. He was perfectly capable of getting so distracted by a math problem that the rest of the world could be hit by a meteor and he wouldn't notice. Charlie could have gone off on some consulting project for some global business and forgotten to notify his father and brother. He could be sitting on a park bench somewhere with a pad of paper, calculating the number of stars in the sky. Don even remembered finding Charlie doing that one night, on the beach, when the kid was only fourteen. Hah, Don hadn't thought of that beach house for years. Rental place, probably torn down by now to make way for a multi-million dollar celebrity hide-out. Charlie couldn't possibly be there. Not even Charlie could be that out of touch. _I hope_.

"Okay, let's do a rational search," he compromised. "Amita, your job is CalSci. You know where Charlie might hide out: in the library, in the computer room. Talk to people there, see if anyone's seen him in the past twenty four hours. Try to get into his email and see if anyone's invited him anywhere recently. Hopefully he doesn't have it locked under a password, but if anyone can crack his code it would be you, Amita. You have my cell; call in every two hours. David, yours is LAPD, and I'll tackle the hospitals. Amita, David and I will head back to headquarters, and I'll get a team started on this."

"You _do_ think something's happened to him."

"Let's just say that I need to be a little extra cautious with a man of his background," Don temporized. _That's it, Don. Take refuge in your professional background. Stay calm and collected. That's how you can find your brother_. "Can you do your part?"

Amita nodded. "I'll get Larry to help."

Don agreed. "That would be good." A full professor was likely to run into fewer road blocks than a graduate student. Obstacles, they didn't need. They had enough without creating more.

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The car stopped. It was a blessing; Charlie already felt as though he was one massive bruise.

The trunk opening up was less of a blessing. Light pierced inside and through Charlie's head like a number ten iron spike; the groan that emerged was entirely warranted, despite the light being meager moonlight. Where ever they were, it was night.

Randall was the one who had opened the trunk. Flexing those pecs that Megan had once admired, he lifted Charlie around so that he could face him. Ralph was close behind.

Was this it? Deserted area—Charlie could see nothing but rocks and the occasional cactus behind his kidnapper. This would be the perfect place to dispose of a body. _Good bye, Dad. Hello, Mom. Didn't think I'd be seeing you this soon_.

That wasn't Randall's intention. He ripped the sleeve off of Charlie's arm, exposing a vein. A long needle glinted in the moonlight, a droplet of fluid leaking from the sharp end.

"If you're smart," Randall said grimly, "you'll tell them that you never saw who it was. It shouldn't be hard. This stuff," and he nodded at the syringe in his hand, "will help. You'll be seeing polka-dotted elephants before too long. Even if you try to tell that brother of yours who did it, he'll never believe you. Consider yourself lucky. And warned. Don't mess with either one of us." He jammed the needle into Charlie's arm. The yelp got smothered by the gag, and then The Great Vervette slammed the trunk closed on him.

Darkness once again.

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Colby leaned back in his chair, eager for action, wanting a lead. "Vanished. What the hell happened to him?"

Megan bit her lip. "We can't let this go on much longer, Don. We have to call the NSA; let them know that Charlie's missing."

"Yeah." Don pushed back the feeling of despair. He was an FBI agent, wasn't he? This was his business, finding lost people. How could this have happened to his _brother_, of all people? Where the hell was he? Don glanced at his watch, as if it would tell him something. "One more hour, then I'll kick it up to them. That'll be twenty-four hours.

"Let's run through the timeline," he continued. "Larry Fleinhardt was the last to see him, yesterday afternoon. They talked about the Splatter Effect, or something like that, in connection with the closed kidnapping case that Charlie was so hot over. Larry tells him about some reviewer, some guy who disagreed with Charlie over some theory. Charlie wrote a nasty response, according to Larry. We know that he finished it, because Larry called the publisher of the journal and verified that they received it, spelling errors and all."

"That brings us to seven PM, Pacific Time, last evening," David said. "That's when the email containing the response was sent, and that works in with how long it would take Charlie to write the response, according to Larry and Amita."

"Then he disappears." Colby leaned forward. "He gets into his car, and poof! He vanishes. Where did he go?"

"Nobody hears from him," Megan mused. "No response to cell phones, there's no accidents involving him or his car. Not even any speeding tickets."

"Which is the most likely way we'd catch up with him." Don needed to grumble, needed to grouch. Anything else would have emerged as a wail, and that wouldn't help.

Colby summed it up: "Where the hell is he?"

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It wasn't polka-dotted elephants, but coyotes with iridescent butterfly wings did visit him. They nipped him all over, sending Charlie writhing in the trunk with imaginary pain. Maybe not so imaginary—every time he rolled over, something else hurt. And his head was still killing him. The only good thing was that some time during his frenzied travels, the gag had worked itself loose and hung like a cheap necklace around his neck, soaking up the sweat.

Words floated out of his mouth, and his drug-induced haze gave them substance even in the dark interior of the trunk of the car. Verbs tended to look green, and nouns were red. Adverbs were the best: beige with dark speckles. Good thing he didn't have the latest codes for the NSA, 'cause he was spouting out everything in his brain. Ralphie baby and Ken-doll were in there, too. He made astounding breakthroughs with the Cognitive Emergence stuff he was working on, frustrated because in the next moment he couldn't remember what he'd said, only that it had been brilliant.

Somewhere, in the rational back part of his brain, he realized that what Ken had told him was correct. That even if Charlie told Don what had happened, they'd never believe him. They'd think it was just more drug-induced hallucinations, fueled by Charlie's own distaste for the psychic.

Damn. Maybe it really was an hallucination. Maybe Ralph and Ken had nothing to do with anything. That's what the crowbar underneath him kept saying as it stabbed him in the ribs.

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_Time's up_. The seconds ticking away on the clock on the wall were no one's friends. It was time to pick up the phone, to call his Area Director, to notify the NSA. It was time to watch it all hit the fan, watch everyone descend on his team and blame them for everything from Charlie's disappearance to the elevated pollution index this morning in the L.A. basin. Don held his head in his hands, wanting to bang it against the wall. It would hurt less.

His team was there, supporting him. Every one of them had called in all the favors they had, searching for his brother, running down leads so far-fetched as to be laughable. Nothing had panned out. Charlie was gone.

It was time. With a deep sigh, Don reached for the phone.

"Knock, knock. Excuse me, Mr. Eppes?"

It was the last person Don wanted to see: The Great Vervette. Finding kids was all very good, but when it came right down to it, there must have been something that they'd overlooked. Charlie knew that, had tried to tell him. Don hadn't listened. He'd known it, deep in his bones, but he hadn't listened to Charlie. He'd allowed the opportunity to needle Charlie override his good sense. If psychics were for real, then the Bureau would have recommended hiring a few on a permanent basis.

"Not a good time, Ralph," Don tried to say.

The Great Vervette interrupted him. "I'm sure it isn't, Mr. Eppes. But I'm getting this overwhelming sense that someone is missing. Someone very close to you. Isn't that right?"

_You could say that_. "Ralph—"

"Let me help," The Great Vervette offered. Sincerity oozed from him. He looked around the office, noting who was there—and who wasn't. His eyes widened. "It's your brother, isn't it? The non-believer."

"Ralph—"

"This is amazing!" he breathed. "Your brother has almost no aura whatsoever, and yet, I know where he is! Yes, _exactly_ where he is!"

"What?"

The Great Vervette had been amusing during the kidnapping cases, embarrassing to Charlie, and supportive to terrified parents. He was none of those things now. He was hope. Don fastened onto his words. _Ralph can't possibly be for real. But what if he is? What if he can find Charlie?_

"I know where he is," Ralph Maurer enunciated clearly. He leaned forward. "He is in great danger. There is no time to lose."

_Crap_. This wasn't a lead, it was a false hope, but Don didn't dare turn anything down. Orders came out: "Megan, you notify the Area Director. Have him call the NSA, in case this doesn't work out. David, Colby, you're with me. We'll take the Suburban." Everyone would fit in that vehicle, and the portable siren was already inside. And there was a substantial first aid kit, as well, just in case. "Let's go."

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More babbling came out, this time directed at gila monster lizard wearing a blue sunbonnet with a daisy on the brim. Charlie's brain kept insisting that it was The Great Vervette in disguise, and that the cartoon Roadrunner beside it was Ken Randall. The Roadrunner held a note pad in its foot and a pencil in its mouth, balancing on the remaining foot.

"It's getting hot," Charlie's ears said, ignoring the fact that speech wasn't part of their job. His mouth didn't mind; it was on vacation with his great toe.

"That's right," the gila monster told him. "It's getting hard to breathe, too."

"Beep," the roadrunner agreed.

"It's not just the drugs," the gila monster added. "Bet you're getting dehydrated. Thirsty?"

All of Charlie agreed to that statement and said so, despite the fact that elbows and knees generally kept silent. In fact, his bellybutton was downright vociferous.

"Tough," the gila monster said. "Bet you're gonna die in this car trunk. Nobody realized that it would get so hot in here. You're going to die of thirst and dehydration. Then won't Don be sorry that he didn't listen to you?"

"Beep."

"Actually, on second thought, he won't," the gila monster mused. "He stills thinks that I'm for real. Stupid agent. Just as stupid as you, math man. You tried to play FBI agent."

"I didn't," Charlie cried out, knowing that his statement was false. What else could it have been? Don had told him to drop the case. Don had been right, which was why it was Charlie in this mess and not Don. He blinked away another bead of sweat, wishing he could cool off. That one of his hallucinations would turn into a tall glass of cool water, with ice. Even one of those iced coffee drinks with whipped cream would do. Anything, as long as it was cold.

"Yes, you did. Yes, you did," the gila monster chanted. "Yes, you did."

"Beep," the roadrunner sneered.

The pair of them drifted off into darkness. Charlie couldn't figure out if it was more hallucinations or because he was fading back into unconsciousness or because the drug was digging deeper but in the end it didn't matter. What did matter was that he didn't have to talk to The Great Vervette any more.

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Pushing the speedometer past one hundred usually gave Don Eppes an adrenaline thrill. This time he felt nothing but fear, fear that he'd never find his brother, or fear that he'd find him too late.

He multi-tasked, thinking over the equipment that he had stashed in the back end: rope, a high-powered sniper's rifle, water, ration bars—the good tasting ones, not the junk the Bureau handed out—blankets, a knife. A first aid kit, heavy duty with splints and bandages and even some left over burn ointment from that time that he'd burned his hand. That stuff wouldn't go bad, and would do more good in his kit than at home where he never was.

David too leaned forward, one hand on the dash to stabilize himself. Despite the heat of the early autumn sun, he'd donned a flak jacket, anticipating the worst, as had Colby in the back. Don hadn't yet put his own on, but that was only because he couldn't maneuver the truck at one hundred miles per hour and shove his arms into the thing at the same time.

There was no jacket for The Great Vervette, the man quivering in terror in the back seat at the speed they were making. Little whimpers emanated from him every time they hit a rut in the road, and there were a lot of ruts. Don didn't care. What he cared about was making good time, the siren on the roof pushing the majority of the traffic off to the side and the size of the Suburban convincing the rest of traffic to behave.

"Left! Go left!" Ralph shrilled. Don wrenched the Suburban to the left, both wheels on that side leaving the tarmac. They settled back on the road with a thump from the wheels and a screech from Ralph.

"How much farther?" Don grated out.

"Not far." Ralph clutched the back of the seat in terror, adding under his breath, "_please_ let it be not much farther!"

Colby spared him a look, trying to hide his disgust. The Great Vervette had oh-so-accidentally bounced into him on more than one occasion until Colby had had the sense to lock him into the seat belt. That spared them both the casual contact.

But—

"There!" The Great Vervette called out. "There! Turn right! I feel it! Turn right! Not so fast," he begged. "Slow down."

"Where is he?"

"Out. I need to get out."

_We need to go faster, and we can do that in the truck_, Don thought. _There's nothing here._

But there was. The Great Vervette hopped out of the Suburban, fell to his knees to kiss the ground in fervent relief, then staggered back to his feet.

"Where is he?" Don growled. He didn't have time for The Great Vervette's antics. There was no one here to impress, not even Ralph's newspaper buddy. Don and his team only wanted to get to Charlie. Did this bozo know where he was, or not?

"The aura grows weaker," The Great Vervette moaned. "I fear I may have difficulty finding him."

Don bit his tongue. Sarcasm would only hinder this guy. Charlie had proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Don bit his tongue once more, watching The Great Vervette sniff the air, as if that was where this 'aura' of his was. Had Don dragged them all out here on a wild goose chase? Charlie would have said so, would have laughed this guy out of his office.

But Don didn't have a better option. All the _good_ options had gone bust. The only thing left—besides Ralph—was for the NSA to dig into which foreign power had decided that an American mathematician was necessary for their future success on the world stage. Don couldn't do that part of the job. He could only watch in frustration as the NSA agents kept him out of the loop and into the looney bin. All Don had was Ralph.

This too was frustrating, watching Ralph skitter here and there, waving his arms around like a bad imitation of Houdini and Carnac the Magnificent.

David dug his fingers into Don's shoulder. "Keep it cool. Let him rant."

"Stay back!" The Great Vervette intoned. "I must feel the aura!"

"I can't take much more of this," Don gritted out between his teeth. "Get him to hurry up!"

The fingers dug in a little harder. "Now you know how those parents felt when their kids were missing."

"I don't need the lecture, David."

"You _do_ need to pull back."

"I need my damn brother to turn up alive and well!"

"Then give Ralph space. Better yet, search where he isn't. Cover more ground."

Don started to glare at him, then closed his eyes. "Sorry, David. You didn't deserve that."

"It's what I'm here for," David murmured, releasing Don's shoulder. "You try over there. Colby's already got the northern end. I'll keep an eye on The Great Dingbat over there."

That almost turned up a smile. "You sound like Charlie. I thought you believed in Ralph."

"Let's just say I'm hedging my bets." David showed a flash of white teeth. "If you'd really listened to Charlie, you'd have heard him say that while Ralph was most likely a fraud, there was always the possibility that he was for real. I'm just surprised that he hasn't put numbers to that possibility."

"Guess I missed that part," Don replied, but he moved off in the direction that David had indicated. _Guess I missed a lot of things, including Charlie himself_.

Don kept his ears open, grinding his teeth every time he heard "the aura! I feel the aura!", but continued to search for anything that might lead him to his brother. There was nothing here but rocks and cacti, with the occasional lizard scurrying away from him. How could Ralph have thought that Charlie was here? What was he doing here? There wasn't a white board in sight, and Charlie would rarely spend time away from any place where he couldn't jot his numbers down. Don ought to be back in town, chasing down fruitless lead after fruitless lead. This was a wild goose chase—

"Don! Tire tracks!"

It was Colby's yell. Don jerked his head up; The Great Vervette had drifted into the area where Colby was searching, David in his wake, his arms upraised as though 'gathering in' Charlie's aura.

But there was nothing 'psychic' about the tire tracks. They were _real_, and they were _fresh_, and they were leading toward—

Damn, it was Charlie's car behind that sand drift! What the hell was it doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Don broke into a run, the others close behind. Ralph chose to move at a more sedate pace.

The car was empty, Don could see that at a glance. And it appeared unharmed. The windows were intact, the transmission was in park, and the keys were even in the ignition. But no one was inside.

"Charlie!" Don yelled, unable to believe that he'd found the car and not the man. It just wasn't fair! "Charlie!" He dropped to his knees to check underneath: nothing but sand.

"The trunk," Colby gasped, out of breath from trying to keep up.

Don grabbed the crowbar that David had dropped back to fetch, ramming the edge into the slender opening and popping it open. The lock flew out of its bolt hole, the metal ruined beyond repair. Don didn't care. He needed the trunk open _now_. He shoved his fingers onto the edge and heaved.

Charlie was there.

He was there, bound hand and foot, his dark curls plastered against his face with sweat and not moving. Eyes closed. Not responding. Don held his breath until he saw his brother take his own small breath—_yes!_ _He's alive!_

"Charlie!" Don breathed, reaching in. "Charlie! Wake up!"

His brother groaned at him. "Dangling participles," he murmured, "with aspirations of asparagus."

"What?" Don couldn't believe that he'd heard correctly. "Charlie?" He slashed through the ropes binding his wrists together. "Charlie, who did this to you?"

Charlie hissed as the blood flood back into his wrists, trying to curl into a limp ball.

"Charlie," Don said urgently, "Charlie, stay with me, buddy. Who did this to you?" He looked over his shoulder; Colby was there. "Get me some water. He's badly dehydrated. Hurry."

"On it." Colby dashed back to the Suburban.

His brother looked bad, eyes sunken into deep hollows with a nasty looking lump that reached into his hairline. "Don?"

"I've got you, buddy. Who did this?"

"The Ken and Barbie dolls."

"What?"

"Barbie with the velvet dress."

"Dammit." His brother was out of his head. It could be the lump on his head—evidence of trauma—or the dehydration, or any combination of the two. Or—"dammit," Don snarled again, spotting the bruise on the inner part of Charlie's elbow. "They drugged him. Colby!" he yelled. "Where's that water?"

"Right here, boss." Colby materialized at his side, the water jug in one hand and a cup in the other, splashing some in. Charlie clutched at the cup like a drowning man reaching for a life saver, his hands shaking so badly that the water slopped over the sides of the cup. Colby steadied it for him, Don holding his brother tight and upright in the trunk of the car so that he could drink.

"David's calling for a med-evac," Colby added. He cast an eye up at the cloudless sky. "Shouldn't take 'em long." He felt along Charlie's neck, wincing at the touch. "Don, he's toasted from being inside that trunk. We need to get him cooled off. Let's get him into your truck and turn up the A.C."

Colby was right. Ralph watched, his eyes wide, as the pair of FBI men pulled the mathematician from the trunk of his own car, draping his arms over their necks and dragging him to Don's Suburban. Ralph bit his lip nervously. "Is he going to be all right?"

David splashed some water onto a stray cloth and handed it to Don inside the truck. "I hope so. He looks pretty far gone. Another twenty minutes…" he let his voice trail off. Don let the cool water dribble onto the heated skin, letting evaporation perform its magic.

"His breathing's getting easier," Don reported after a few minutes, "and his skin is getting cooler. David, go up front and turn down the A.C. Don't want him getting pneumonia on top of all this. How long before the chopper gets here?" Charlie's eyes had closed, and Don didn't like it, didn't like the limp way that Charlie lay in his arms.

Ralph watched as David went to the cab and turned the knob to low. The Suburban's engine was working hard in the desert heat, keeping the interior of the vehicle cool, the engine's thermometer rising under the onslaught. Barely seen inside was Don Eppes, trying to push more liquids down his brother's throat, holding Charlie upright so that he could swallow without choking. _This is real_, Ralph thought. _That Eppes person almost died. That wasn't supposed to happen. We didn't know that the trunk would get so hot. Would it have made a difference to Ken if we had known?_

Don looked up as if he felt Ralph's eyes upon him. He steadied the cup to Charlie's lips, helping him to sip. Charlie's movements were less frantic, less frenzied now that he was restoring the water levels inside. Don caught Ralph's eye. "Thank you," he said fervently. _The hell with Charlie's theories._ _The Great Vervette is the real thing_. "You pulled it off again. I owe you a big one."

Ralph flushed, but it could have been from the heat of the sun beating down on his head. He turned away, bumping into David coming back around to the rear of the Suburban where the action was.

"We all owe you, Ralph," David told him. He took hold of Ralph's shoulder, squeezing just hard enough to emphasize how deeply they all felt. "Charlie's one of us."

Ralph looked away, looked out across the barren sand. He bit his lip. "He almost died," he murmured. "He almost died."


	7. Mind of the Beholder 7

"If you can tell me that you're no longer seeing Spiderman playing the string bass in the corner of this room, maybe I'll believe you." Don Eppes leaned forward in his chair. The chair creaked, and Don wondered if it would continue to hold his weight. _Well, if I fall, at least I'm in the right place: a hospital. They can pick up the pieces_.

Charlie tried to look honest. "He's gone," he lied. "And so is the octopus with ten tentacles on the marimbas who kept hitting the B flat instead of the C sharp." It was tough trying to fool his older brother. Charlie felt like he'd been run over by a truck. Who knew that being all but par-boiled in the trunk of a car could nearly kill him, let alone leave him barely able to lift his head off of this ultra-flat and ultra-uncomfortable hospital pillow? "_Now_ will you go after Ralph and that reporter accomplice of his?"

Don settled himself back on the chair. "You never told me about the octopus."

"What? It had ten arms. I knew it was an hallucination. Anyway, it's gone, and it took all the sharps and flats with it. I'm better. No more drugs. No more hallucinations."

"Right. And you're going to try to tell me that The Great Vervette and Ken Randall weren't an hallucination?" Don shook his head. "The D.A. would take one look at this case and burst out laughing. Then she'd tell me that my stand up comedy routine needs more work than my investigation. You have all the credibility of those kidnapped kids. Less, actually. Buddy, somebody pumped you full of a narcotic cocktail that the Forensics Lab back at headquarters is still trying to decipher."

"So that's where all my blood ended up. No wonder I'm dehydrated and thirsty."

"Couldn't possibly be because you were stuck for hours in the trunk of your own car under the blazing desert sun." Don took that as a cue to offer his brother another cup of water. Charlie sipped at the straw, trying to pretend that his hands weren't so shaky that he needed the help. Don fought down another pang of terror. It had been so close! The docs had verified what Colby had said: another twenty minutes, and they might have been too late. The world would have been out one slightly eccentric genius. "So you understand that we can't consider you the most reliable witness around."

"Don, I've got a lump on my head the size of a golf ball. _That's_ not an hallucination."

"You could have fallen down the stairs," Don pointed out.

"Right. I fell down the staircase in the back seat of my car, whereupon the banister administered the narcotic cocktail, ably assisted by the top step." Charlie lay back on the pillow, frustrated that all his energy had fled. "The fourth and fifth risers collaborated to stick me in the trunk." The last words came out in a whisper.

"Hey, I'm not saying that's what happened," Don protested, "just that you're not a good witness under these circumstances. And, let's face it, you haven't been exactly best buds with The Great Vervette. Any defense attorney would take one look at your testimony and ask if you expect a cut of the fee for making his job so easy."

"Don, I'm telling you, Ralph Maurer and Ken Randall are the kidnappers! Think about it! What better way for a psychic to 'prove' that he's psychic than to get an accomplice—namely, a live-in lover who _happens_ to be a reporter—to kidnap a kid, pin it on someone else, and then the psychic can 'find' the kid because he knew where the kid was all along?" Charlie paused to catch his breath and, not incidentally, his strength. It felt good to breathe in air that was less than four hundred degrees, even if it was through a plastic mask that made it smell bad. "Then he does the same thing to me!"

"Which reminds me." Don pulled the smile off of his face. "Where did he snatch you from?"

_Oops_. "That doesn't matter," Charlie muttered.

"Beg to differ, brother mine. The NSA is breathing down my neck, wanting to wrap you in a cocoon in case this happens again, wondering if they need to assign you a full time bodyguard instead of the temporary pair outside in the hall. Where did this assailant of yours grab you?"

Silence.

"Charlie?"

"Oh, all right." Charlie turned his face away. "Ralph invited me into his house. Which is when I realized that the relationship between psychic and reporter wasn't limited to the professional. And _they_ realized that _I_ realized, and it went downhill from there." The confession hurt worse than all the bruises.

"And what were you doing at Ralph's house?"

More silence.

"Charlie?"

"You wouldn't listen to me!" Charlie burst out. "Don, you completely dismissed my calculations and refused to pay attention! What was I supposed to do? Let them get away with it?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Don returned, keeping his own temper under control. Dammit, his brother looked so, so _exhausted_, lying there against the white sheets. Don wanted to rip into him, terrify him as much as Charlie had terrified Don when he'd gone missing. Dammit, he'd almost died! Didn't Charlie realize that? "Charlie, not one of us wanted that case to get left unsolved, but we didn't have a choice! So you found that Ralph lived in a nearby neighborhood and had a black sedan with the right letters on the plates. So do a bunch of other people. While it was a hot case, we could look around, and we did. But once the kids were safe, other cases needed to take priority. What, you think all we do around here is track down anomalies? News flash, buddy: lots of cases go unsolved, with or without consultants. _Consultants_, Charlie: not field agents. What the hell did you think you were doing, going out there?"

"So you do believe me!" Charlie whispered triumphantly. "You know that I was there, that I'm telling the truth! The Great Vervette is a fraud!"

"Sure. And so is your friend the ten-armed octopus with a thing for marimbas. Charlie, it doesn't matter what _I_ believe. What matters is what a _jury_ will believe, and if we go into court with a story of butterflies marinated in martinis, Ralph and Ken are gonna walk. You want that, Charlie?"

Charlie sighed, his eyes closing in spite of what _he_ wanted.

Stab of fear: Don shook Charlie's shoulder. "You okay, buddy?"

"Yeah." Another sigh, this one even more tired. The eyes tried to re-open, and failed. "I just wish I could decide which one of you is the real one: the one with the green pointy ears or the one with the clown's nose."

_Relief_. "You idiot." Don sat back, releasing his brother's arm. "Sleep it off, buddy," he advised gently. "Things'll look better in the morning. Really better."

"No more dragons on the ceiling?"

"No more dragons," Don promised, but Charlie had already drifted off in slumber.

Don watched him sleep for a few moments, the breaths coming even and regular under the plastic oxygen mask. The machine controlling the IV whirred quietly. Don's eyes went hooded; the kidnapped kids were a closed case, but this one wasn't. This one was fresh. And personal. But not closed.

But it would be. Soon.

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Charlie blinked, and closed his eyes against the blinding sun. A frown; he'd fallen asleep on the short journey in the Suburban when Don had come to the hospital to spring him from their medical clutches. Not fair; Don got shot, and got out after a bare four hours in the Emergency Department. Charlie only got stuffed into a trunk and they'd kept him twenty four hours. Dammit, was he really that worn out from the whole kidnapping thing that a fifteen minute drive was enough to put him into a ten minute coma? Apparently so. He blinked again, trying to focus on the building in front of them. "This isn't CalSci."

"Brilliant deductive powers," Don said dryly from behind the wheel. "No, it's not."

"I thought we were going to swing by so that I could pick up some papers to grade—"

"Amita says she has that under control," Don interrupted. "And she's arranged to have your classes covered for the next week."

"The entire week? Don, that's—"

"Just what the doctor ordered," Don interrupted yet again. "I was there. I heard him."

"I was there, too, you know—"

"Still hallucinating?" Don asked innocently. "Auditory hallucinations, this time? Hearing voices?"

Charlie hurriedly changed the subject—almost. "If I'm not supposed to be working, what am I doing here? FBI headquarters isn't home. At least, not for me," he added sarcastically.

"Need your help."

"And that's not work?"

"Not really. You're a witness, remember?"

"A crazy one. No use to anyone. That's what you said."

"Not any more. The docs claim that it's all out of your system. That you're back to being your normal, flaky self, not crazier than usual."

"Gee, thanks."

"Anyway, I need your help."

"I left my laptop…" Charlie trailed off. "Actually, I'm not sure where my laptop is. My office, I think."

"Don't need it," Don replied airily. "All I need is your sweet self."

"Why do I think that this is a trap?" Warily.

"Not for you, buddy." There was a smirk on Don's face but it didn't seem, to Charlie's relief, to be aimed at Charlie. "All you have to do is sit there. You can relax." He took Charlie's arm, worried that the man would topple over onto his face. _Just what he needs: another bruise to go with the lump on his skull._

But Don successfully maneuvered Charlie onto the elevator, steadying him only once when the knees seemed a little wobbly, guiding him to Don's office where Don had made certain that his own chair, the one that was the most comfortable, was available for his brother.

"Charlie," Megan greeted them, sticking a pencil behind her ear. "Good to see you. How are you feeling?"

"A lot better," Charlie lied. There was a lot of that—lying—going on, he reflected. _I lie to Megan, Don lies to me, and psychics lie to everyone. Reporters? They aren't supposed to lie. Ken Randall is an anomaly_. Charlie caught himself allowing his thoughts to wander into uncomfortable arenas—that wasn't a three-headed bullfrog that he didn't see over there in that corner, was it? Charlie had had enough of hallucinations to last him a lifetime. He forced his mind back to the present.

David and Colby too greeted him warmly, as well as people he barely knew, people whose faces he recognized but names were a lost cause. Charlie hadn't realized just how well-known his work had become to the FBI.

"Yeah, a bunch of people around here take your work pretty seriously, buddy," Don said, which was how Charlie realized that he'd spoken out loud. Charlie flushed uncomfortably. But Don moved on. "Listen, I want you to just sit here, okay? Don't go anywhere. Don't move from this chair, all right?"

"Don—"

"David, you sit here with him. Make like you're interviewing him. Pad and pencil, make it look convincing. He's giving you a statement. Charlie, you don't budge."

"Got it." David plopped himself in another chair, grabbing a stray pen from Don's desk. "Listen, Charlie, if you face sideways to the door, people can see you but not your face. You can take a nap, if you need to. You can close your eyes."

Charlie frowned. "What's going on?"

David's smirk had the same character to it that Don's had had. Come to think of it, both Megan and Colby had also boasted canary-swallowing expressions, Charlie reflected. There was something about to happen. Charlie relaxed in Don's chair. Whatever it was, Don and team had set it up and they didn't expect him to do anything more than sit right here. That was a relief, because his eyelids were growing heavy by a seriously exponential factor…

"Charlie. Charlie, wake up."

"Huh?"

"Thought you'd want to be awake for this part." David sat back down, picked up his pad and pen. There was a surprisingly well-crafted doodle on the paper, Charlie noted, but that wasn't what truly caught his attention.

Don walked by the office on his way to the interrogation room, The Great Vervette at his side. Ralph Maurer did a double take upon seeing Charlie behind the door, his mouth opening as if to say something. Charlie blinked.

"Hey, Charlie," Don called out in an off-handed greeting but kept walking past, dragging Ralph along with him through the corridor. Ralph's mouth closed with an almost audible snap. Don kept a straight face. "Ralph, did you say something?"

It came out in a squeak. "No. No."

"Okay. David, we'll be in Interrogation Room Three. You coming?"

"As soon as I finish up here, Don." David pointed his pen at Charlie, making sure that The Great Vervette could see his actions. "I should have something for you shortly."

"Good. I'll be glad to close this case. Unlike the others." Don walked off, Ralph throwing nervous stares behind them at Charlie.

"I thought he was in the hospital. That he had been drugged. That he couldn't be a witness." Ralph's nervous voice trailed away in the distance. "What is he doing here?"

Charlie stared back, turning to David as soon as the pair turned the corner. "What was that all about?"

David held up a finger. "Wait. There's more."

Next to walk by was Colby. His companion was Ken Randall. The reporter towered over the shorter FBI agent, but Colby seemed completely uncowed. "Hey, Charlie. Glad to see you're looking better." He waved with awesome nonchalance.

Randall paled at the sight of his erstwhile victim, but he collected himself rapidly. "Dr. Eppes. Nice to see you again. Have you been ill?"

"He was abducted," Colby told Randall curtly. "Almost killed. Another twenty minutes in that car trunk, and he would have been dead. And I have to tell you, we're none of us too happy over this. Charlie's one of us. We take care of our own."

Randall allowed his reporter's instincts to come to the forefront with just enough hesitation for Charlie to realize that it was studied. "Killed, you say? Can I have the story? Dr. Eppes, an exclusive? I can almost promise you page two, maybe even page one."

"Maybe later," David put in coolly, quickly enough so that Charlie didn't need to respond to the man. David turned back to his 'witness'. "I have my own exclusive to take down first."

"Let's go." Colby pushed the reporter on down the hall.

"What's this about, Agent Granger? You have my notes. What more are you after?" The voices grew faint as the pair moved away.

"It's okay, Charlie." David put his hand on Charlie's arm, and only then did Charlie realize that he was shaking. David's expression grew concerned. "Listen, you don't have to go through with this. Don just thought you might like to be in at the end. You want me to take you home?"

Charlie blinked, and took a deep breath, willing his hands to stop trembling. "No, I'm okay." It was as much to reassure himself as David. "What do you want me to do?"

"You okay to walk to the Observation Room? You're not going to fall over on me?"

"Observation Room?"

"You can see them, but they can't see you." David searched Charlie's face, estimating if the man could actually travel that far. "They won't be able to see you, Charlie."

Don wanted him to do this. Charlie could do it. "Let's go."

But he was glad that it was only a short walk. Embarrassing, for a man who used to bike back and forth to campus every day. He ought to be stronger. He all but fell into the chair beside Megan, covered up by grabbing the arms and easing himself the rest of the way down onto the seat.

This Observation room was situated between two Interrogation Rooms, and Charlie could see into both of them. The first contained Don and The Great Vervette. The second held Ken Randall alone, Colby having dropped the man off and exited. A moment later Colby himself joined the trio in the Observation room, sitting himself in a chair directly behind Charlie.

"You should have seen Randall," Colby grinned, "after we walked past you. All he could do was to talk about his notes on the kidnapping cases. Talk about nerves! The guy was ready to freak out." He leaned back in his chair. "I'm looking forward to this, Charlie."

"Me, too," Charlie echoed faintly, not certain if he was telling the truth. His own memory seemed awfully dim right now. The last twenty four hours were a cacophony of the improbable interacting with the utterly ridiculous, all of it played in front of him until he couldn't tell what was real and what was drug-induced hallucinations. There were only a few things, bolstered by the evidence, that he could point to as real: the lump on his head, for one. The hospital bruises on his arms that made him look like an incompetent drug addict, for another, from the IV's and the blood-letting. And the fact that they'd found his car, with Charlie inside the trunk, out in the middle of the high desert. _Not a lot to show for twenty four hours._

_Did this really happen?_ Don was right, Charlie realized; the drug that whoever had given him had effectively wiped out his reliability for the last twenty four hours. Odds of being right? Vanishingly small. In fact, if he really put his mind to it—his conscious mind, not the drug-tormented one—Charlie could just bet that he could assign it a probability in terms of something like thirty six thousand to one. What if Charlie was wrong? What if he really _had_ let his dislike of the Great Vervette taint his hallucinations until he was ready to accuse the wrong man? Charlie had to be honest: there was no way he could stand in a court of law and swear to it being The Great Vervette and his reporter. Not under these circumstances.

Interrogation Room Three was not large. There was a bare metal table in the center with a folding chair on either side of it. Don gestured for The Great Vervette to sit, taking the other chair himself. He glanced at the glass on one wall, a one-way see through mirror that fooled no one. The only advantage it had was that the occupants of the room couldn't observe the observers. Charlie found that that helped only slightly.

Megan flipped the switch that allowed the voices to come through.

"Wh—why are we in this room, Mr. Eppes?" Ralph Maurer looked a great deal smaller with no one to impress and the FBI agent impressing him a great deal.

Don ignored his question. He ruffled through the manila folder in his hands, opening it so that the observers behind the mirror could see the contents that remained obscured to The Great Vervette. It was a cartoon of a turbaned magician floating on a carpet. In the next frame, the magician had fallen off of his carpet that had slipped on a banana peel. It wasn't particularly funny, but it got the point across. Charlie started to feel a little better.

"Mr. Maurer." Special Agent Eppes finished perusing the 'information' contained in the folder. He remained standing, the better to look down on The Great Vervette. "I find that we need to have a discussion about the events of yesterday, namely the abduction of Dr. Charles Eppes. Were you aware that, as a consultant for not only the FBI but the NSA, Dr. Eppes is considered high risk? That his whereabouts at all times is the interest of the federal government? That anyone involved in his abduction is incurring the possibility of being arrested for treason?" _Actually, that possibility bordered around slim to none, but there was no reason to let Ralph know that_.

"Tr—treason?" One more octave, and Ralph would have hit high C.

"Treason?" Charlie swiveled his head around to Megan for confirmation.

_Or Charlie_.

Megan shook her head. "That's going a little far," she assured him.

David shrugged. "I don't know. It's not _that_ far off. The NSA sounded pretty upset when the Area Director called them. You saw how fast those two bodyguards showed up at the hospital."

Charlie gulped.

"Treason, Mr. Maurer. With the potential for the death penalty, if proven. That should attest to how serious this is." Don left the manila folder closed on the table in front of him. He seated himself in the chair across from Ralph. "Tell me what you know of the abduction of Dr. Eppes," he invited in an icy voice.

"I—" Ralph looked around. There was no help anywhere in the featureless room. "I—" He swallowed again.

"Mr. Maurer?"

Ralph took a deep breath and launched into his story. "I first became aware that something was amiss with your team two days ago, Mr. Eppes. You remember that; I came to your office. My powers had told me that someone was in danger, but I had no idea of who that could be." When Don showed almost no reaction, he warmed to his story, gaining confidence in the tale he was spinning. "The next day I was certain of it, and I returned. You confirmed that it was your brother, and I simply _knew_ where he was." Don could hear the italics in The Great Vervette's voice. "I _sensed_ his danger, and his location. I led you to him." The Great Vervette lifted his chin, daring Don to argue.

Don declined the dare. "That's all?"

"That's all, Mr. Eppes."

"Are you certain of that, Mr. Maurer?" There was a frozen invitation in Don's words. Charlie shivered, grateful not to be sitting on the other side of the table from his brother. He'd heard that his brother was good at interrogations, but it was an entirely different experience to be watching it in person.

The stiff expression wavered. "Yes. Yes, that's all."

"Last chance to amend your statement."

"Statement?" The Great Vervette squeaked. "Am—am I under arrest?"

"Not at this time," Don told him. He did a classic double take, without any trace of humor. "Is there some reason that you thought you might be, Mr. Maurer?"

"No. I mean, I found him—alive, he was alive. The first one to find him. Suspect, maybe. The first one is always a suspect. I'm not a suspect. I mean, I'm not the one that you want. I didn't put him there, in the trunk. Of the car. In the desert. Suspect. Not me." The Great Vervette was sinking into a healthy spate of babbling. Charlie wondered if he himself had spouted that quantity of gibberish while drugged, and had the sinking suspicion that he'd sounded worse.

"You're quite right about that, Mr. Maurer. Anyone with information about an abduction victim is automatically considered a suspect. I'm going to ask you to remain in this room for a few moments while I retrieve some additional data. There is a good chance that I will be requesting the details of your whereabouts for the last two days, including your trips to this office. Just to rule you out as a suspect, of course." Don slid a pad of lined paper at Ralph. "You may use that. I will return shortly."

"But—"

"If you need some water, you can knock on the door." Don let himself out.

Charlie looked at Megan in bewilderment. "What's going on?"

"What, you don't like Don's interrogation technique?" Megan grinned. "He's always boasting about your lecturing. Likes it a lot, to hear him tell it."

"He does?" That was as much a revelation to the younger Eppes as anything he'd heard yet.

"Flip the other switch," Colby prodded Megan. "Don's about to go after Randall." Colby's face was wreathed with a wide grin. "I'm going to enjoy this one. You will, too, Charlie."

"I will? Why?"

But Colby only would repeat, "watch. This is the good one."

Charlie certainly hoped so. His head throbbed, the lump that Randall had put there aching all the more at the sight of the big man. His arm too remembered a certain less than sharp needle with some vicious drug inside.

The room was identical to the one that The Great Vervette had been placed in but Ken Randall was too nervous to sit.

"Sit down," Don invited coolly.

"I'd rather stand. What's this all about?"

"The abduction of Dr. Charles Eppes."

"Your brother? The consultant who wasn't able to find those kids?" Randall had his own share of iron-clad nerves, Charlie had to give him that. Charlie himself would have cracked under Don's steely gaze. Come to think of it, he had, back when they were kids. Charlie could never keep anything from Don. _Is that where you got your technique from, brother? Practicing on me? It worked._

"The very one."

"I wasn't aware that he had been missing. Did you try consulting The Great Vervette?"

"Actually, Mr. Maurer came in and offered his services. He was apparently aware of the abduction before we were."

"Good for him. How ironic that your brother was the one who didn't believe in The Great Vervette's powers. I'm assuming that The Great Vervette was successful, since I saw Dr. Eppes sitting in that office a few moments ago." Randall wasn't rattled.

"Very. He was able to lead us to Dr. Eppes in the nick of time. Had we been much later, we would have been pursuing a murderer instead of a mere kidnapper. That's a much more serious charge, especially under _these_ circumstances."

"These circumstances?" Ah, a crack in Randall's chitin exterior. Charlie barely caught it but all three of the watching FBI agents leaned forward in anticipation.

"Yes. You were aware, were you not, that Dr. Eppes also consults for some of the highest agencies in the federal government? If Mr. Maurer hadn't been successful, there would have been a great deal of high level activity reaching through several levels of government."

"But he _was_ successful." Randall pulled out his own pad of paper, trying to take control of the discussion. "An exclusive, Special Agent Eppes? Perhaps a sidebar with your brother? I'm certain that I can talk with The Great Vervette, assuming that you haven't refused to let him discuss the case."

"Oh, he's done a great deal of discussing." Don declined to let Randall know just what that discussion included, letting the reporter worry. _Has Ralph cracked under the pressure? Did your partner in life give you up?_

But Randall refused to take the bait. "Where was he found, Special Agent Eppes? You said that he almost died? Your people removed my recorder; I'd like to use it for this interview."

Don ignored the last statement. "Dr. Eppes was found in the trunk of his car, in the high desert. Yes, he was almost dead, which makes it attempted murder. _And _premeditated." He indicated the chair. "Sit down, Mr. Randall." Don seated himself, all but forcing Randall to do likewise in order to continue the conversation.

"What do you need me for? Ah." Randall allowed an expression of comprehension to emerge. "You think that's there some connection with the kidnapping cases that The Great Vervette helped you with earlier. You're welcome to my notes, Special Agent Eppes, but I thought that your people already had a copy of them."

"Yes, we do think there's a connection," Don told him. "Tell me; what do you know about the kidnapping of Dr. Eppes?"

Confusion, this time, carefully applied to both face and voice. "Nothing. I just heard about it, from you. What's this all about? What are you trying to say?"

"My people have finished interviewing my brother." Don leaned forward. "He seems to think that you had something to do with it. There's a lump on his head where someone hit him over the head." Don hardened his voice. "Where were you, Mr. Randall, two afternoons ago?"

"You can't possibly believe anything that he says," Randall protested. "He's not a reliable witness!"

"Why not, Mr. Randall? He seems very reliable to me."

Randall darted a glance at the one way mirror. Charlie clutched the arms of his chair before telling himself again that Randall couldn't see him. His arm throbbed, reminding him of the needle that Randall had slid into his vein, pumping in whatever concoction he'd come up with to scramble Charlie's thoughts.

"He almost died!" Randall grated out. He was finally close to shouting, losing his cool under Don's insinuations. The pad lay forgotten on the table. "He was out of his head. He was drugged. He wasn't thinking clearly! No one could say what was going on under those circumstances! You can't possibly take his accusations seriously! He hates Ralph! He just made it up, that Ralph and I are involved!"

"Really?" Charlie could see it: Don had just let Randall make his first mistake. What was the mistake? Don knew, and his team knew. The FBI agent closed in with all the delicacy of a mako shark. "What makes you say that, Mr. Randall? Why would you think that he was out of his head?"

"Why…" Randall looked around the room for help. "It—it just makes sense. You said that he almost died. He couldn't possibly have been coherent…"

"Actually, you're correct," Don told him. "My brother was dehydrated to the point of death, had suffered concussion from the blow to his head, and was drugged. The Forensics Lab is still working on the exact formula to the drug."

"Then you can't possibly believe what he said!" Randall said triumphantly. "I realize that he's your brother, Special Agent Eppes, but—"

"Tell me, Mr. Randall: how did you know that Dr. Eppes was drugged?"

Randall stared at Don. "Why…you told me."

"No, I didn't." Don remained collected, keeping his temper under iron control. "I said that he'd been hit over the head, and that he almost died. How did you know that he'd been drugged?"

Randall looked around the room, begging the bare walls for an answer. "I must have heard it from someone. Maybe as we were walking through the hallways. I haven't seen your brother in days. Weeks, even. Not since the last kidnapping. If anyone says anything different, they're lying. Or out of their heads. Or on _drugs_," he finished triumphantly, repeating the word for emphasis.

"Possibly," Don agreed. To Charlie, Don looked like he was about to pounce, cat-like, ready for the moment. What was Don up to?

The moment came. "Care to explain how your fingerprints were found on the steering wheel of his car?" Don leaned over the table to put his face six inches away from Randall's. "Care to explain how your fingerprints were on a car that you'd never seen, let alone driven? Care to explain how your _fresh_ fingerprints are on the steering wheel of the car belonging to a man you haven't seen for weeks? I _do_ believe my brother, Mr. Randall, but not because he's my brother. I believe him because the facts support his version of what happened." Don glanced at the mirror, unable to see Charlie but knowing that he was there. "Logic, Mr. Randall. Cold, hard logic based on cold, hard fact."

If he hadn't still felt so weak, Charlie would have jumped up and cheered.

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"So, let me get this straight." Amita finished the bite of pizza. "This never was about ransoming kidnapped kids. Maurer and Randall concocted this whole scheme in order to pump up The Great Vervette so that he could cash in on his fame by fleecing other people? They never intended for the kids to be hurt?"

"Right." Don snagged the last pepperoni slice before Charlie could. "Both times Randall took Maurer's car just to throw us off the track, snatched the kid, then paid someone else to 'collect' the ransom. The first time he suckered in a two-bit hood who panicked and went out in a hail of bullets. The second time he hired a two-bit actor, but both times he went for someone that the kids could potentially identify as him, with general similarities in body structure. Randall always wore a blond wig when hiring and kidnapping, and both Barris and Stashov were blond and of similar builds. Randall's alibi seemed solid; he was alongside the families, 'reporting' on The Great Vervette, whenever any of the action was going on. No one would have suspected either him or Ralph Maurer."

"So how did they manage the phone call to the parents?" Larry asked. "And I hope that you have left me the last slice of white pizza."

"Still there, Larry," Charlie said, his mouth full. "The white's all yours. Phone calls through the miracle of technology. David told me that they reviewed the tapes of the phone calls. It was all pre-planned. The caller never actually responded to any of the parents' questions or demands, just keep on talking about what the kidnappers wanted. That's why the kids never could talk to the parents. It was all taped ahead of time. Then Ralph would miraculously 'find' the kids where Randall had stashed them, and collect his fame and the grateful thanks of the public on his way to establishing one of the more prosperous clairvoyance studios." He turned to Don. "But what did Randall get out of this?"

"Same thing," Don told him. "Fame and fortune. Randall raked in a bundle from those articles he wrote, especially because they were 'exclusive'. He was getting offers from major news agencies around the country, was going to head straight to the top. And the two of them were living together; when one benefited, so did the other."

"Told you he was a fraud," Charlie said, words barely intelligible through the munching.

"And I agreed with you."

"No. You thought he was a real psychic."

"Did not. I said he was a fraud, too."

"You said he was a _successful_ fraud."

"Well, he was. He got away with it."

"Until Charles entered the picture," Larry observed. "With a potential jail term of ten or more years to look forward to, I can scarcely describe either Mr. Maurer or Mr. Randall as successful any longer."

"Yeah, well, that's science for you." Don looked at his brother with barely disguised affection. "Skeptical mathematician. Can't take anything on faith. You take all the fun out of life."

"Gullible FBI agent. You pretend that psychic powers work, even when there's no reasonable data to support it."

Don folded his arms and sniffed. "Spoilsport."

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For more spoilsport stuff, google the following terms: P.T.Barnum Effect, the Forer Effect, and The Skeptical Inquirer. Have fun!


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